“
Until a few days ago, humans had been little more than legend to him, and now here he was in their world. It was like stepping into the pages of a book -- a book alive with color and fragrance, filth and chaos -- and the blue-haired girl moved through it all like a fairy through a story, the light treating her differently than it did others, the air seemed to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place was a story about her.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
“
“MAKE RED YOUR CLAWS WITH HUMAN BLOOD…OBLITERATE THE HUMAN FILTH…”
“Ooh, that’s a nice song,” said the Hogfly, ever polite.
”
”
Cressida Cowell (How to Betray a Dragon's Hero (How to Train Your Dragon, #11))
“
If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)
“
We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.
”
”
William Boyd (Any Human Heart)
“
People who live in society have learned to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. Is that why my flesh is naked? You might say - yes you might say, nature without humanity… Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.
”
”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“
Faeries began calling foul play, demanding Tamlin be released from the curse, calling her a liar. Through the haze, I saw Rhysand crouching by Tamlin. Not to help him, but to grab the-
"You are all pigs - all scheming, filthy pigs."
Then Rhysand was on his feet, my bloody knife in his hands. He launched himself at Amarantha, swift as a shadow, the ash dagger aimed at her throat.
She lifted a hand - not even bothering to look - and he was blasted back by a wall of white light.
But the pain paused for a second, long enough for me to see him hit the ground and rise again and lunge for her - with hands that now ended in talons. He slammed into the invisible wall Amarantha had raised around herself, and my pain flickered as she turned to him.
"You traitorous piece of filth," she seethed at Rhysand. "You're just as bad as the human beasts." One by one, as if a hand were shoving them in, his talons pushed back into his skin, leaving blood in their wake. He swore, low and vicious. "You were planning this all along.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
“
Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I’m not. I’m not only ashamed to call you human, I’m completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you’re the one who doesn’t deserve to breathe our air. Decent’s got nothing to do with birthright. It’s all about actions, and trust me, you’re the lowest form I’ve ever met and I’ve taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I’d rather sit at the table with them than you any day. (Shahara to Mara)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Fire (The League: Nemesis Rising, #2))
“
What does he know of the half-starved wretches toiling from dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? of young girls dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh?
”
”
Harriet Ann Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)
“
Briseis is kneeling by my body. She has brought water and cloth, and washes the blood and dirt from my skin. Her hands are gentle, as though she washes a baby, not a dead thing. Achilles opens the tent, and their eyes meet over my body.
"Get away from him," he says.
"I am almost finished. He does not deserve to lie in filth."
"I would not have your hands on him."
Her eyes are sharp with tears. "Do you think you are the only one who loved him?"
"Get out. Get out!"
"You care more for him in death than in life." Her voice is bitter with grief. "How could you have let him go? You knew he could not fight!"
Achilles screams, and shatters a serving bowl. "Get out!"
Briseis does not flinch. "Kill me. It will not bring him back. He was worth ten of you. Ten! And you sent him to his death!"
The sound that comes from him is hardly human. "I tried to stop him! I told him not to leave the beach!"
"You are the one who made him go." Briseis steps towards him. "He fought to save you, and your darling reputation. Because he could not bear to see you suffer!"
Achilles buries his face in his hands. But she does not relent. "You have never deserved him. I do not know why he ever loved you. You care only for yourself!"
Achilles' gaze lifts to meet hers. She is afraid, but does not draw back. "I hope that Hector kills you."
The breath rasps in his throat. "Do you think I do not hope the same?" he asks.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
This book is a salute to the scientists and the surgeons, running along in the wake of combat, lab coats flapping. Building safer tanks, waging war on filth flies. Understanding turkey vultures. T
”
”
Mary Roach (Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War)
“
What good is a crow to a pack of grieving humans? A huddle. A throb. A sore. A plug. A gape. A load. A gap. So, yes. I do eat baby rabbits, plunder nests, swallow filth, cheat death, mock the starving homeless, misdirect, misinform. Oi, stab it! A bloody load of time wasted. But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief is the Thing with Feathers)
“
Disease. Filth. Waste. Crime. Brutality. What’s there to like? (Solin)
There’s brutality on Olympus. (Arik)
True. But I hate humanity as much as I hate the gods. Both groups are selfish bastards bent on destroying everything around them. They were given a perfect world and rather than enjoy it, they’d rather destroy it and each other. Excuse me if I don’t look at them with love in my eyes but rather scorn in my heart. (Solin)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (The Dream-Hunter (Dark-Hunter, #10; Dream-Hunter, #1))
“
All I can think about is that boy’s skull, bashed in, the way his head was caved in and how it wasn’t like a heid at all, just like a broken silly puppet face, about how when you destroy something, when you brutalise it, it always looks warped and disfigured and slightly unreal and unhuman and that’s what makes it easier for you to go on brutalising it, go on fucking it and hurting it and mashing until you’ve destroyed it completely, proving that destruction is natural in the human spirit, that nature has devices to enable us to destroy, to make it easier for us; a way of making righteous people who want to act do things without the fear of consequence, a way of making us less than human, as we break the laws . . .
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Filth)
“
TAL HAD TO laugh. Hardly presentable! Wasn’t it strange, the way humans looked at themselves with eyes of flesh and not of the Spirit? Certainly that dear woman had been through mire and filth of every degree; she was scarred, exhausted, ragged, and dirty. But to the angels, she appeared as God Himself saw her, just as any other redeemed saint of the living God: pure, shining, clean, dressed in garments as white as snow.
”
”
Frank E. Peretti (Piercing the Darkness)
“
It didn't take long. In that despondent changeless heat the entire human content of the ship congealed into a massive drunkenness. People moved flabbily about like squid in a tank of tepid smelly water. From that moment on we saw, rising to the surface, the terrifying nature of white men, exasperated, freed from constraint, absolutely unbuttoned, their true nature, same as in the war. That tropical steam bath called forth the instincts as August breeds toads and snakes on the fissured walls of prisons. In the European cold, under gray, puritanical northern skies, we seldom get to see our brothers' festering cruelty except in times of carnage, but when roused by the foul fevers of the tropics, their rottenness rises to the surface. That's when the frantic unbuttoning sets in, when filth triumphs and covers us entirely. It's a biological confession. Once work and cold weather cease to constrain us, once they relax their grip, the white man shows you the same spectacle as a beautiful beach when the tide goes out: the truth, fetid pools, crabs, carrion, and turds.
”
”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night)
“
Uninhibited, they wallowed with zest in the filth and mire of their political conceptions and needs, among the very leaders of their society, but nevertheless the very dregs of human civilisation and moral standards. A historian who finds excuses for such conduct by references to the supposed spirit of the times, or by omission, or by silence, shows thereby that his account of events is not to be trusted.
”
”
C.L.R. James (The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution)
“
It is a comfort to me to know that above the steam and filth of human lowlands there is a higher, brighter humanity, very small in number (for everything outstanding is by its nature rare): one belongs to it, not because one is more talented or more virtuous or more heroic or more loving than the men below, but—because one is colder, brighter, more far-seeing, more solitary; because one endures, prefers, demands solitude as happiness.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power)
“
How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a treeful of rotten fruit. Nor do I believe in progress. A vermin-eaten saint scratching his filth for heaven is better off than you damned in clean linen. Progress doubles our tenure in a vale of tears. Man is a mistake, to be corrected only by his abolition, which he gives promise of seeing to himself. Oh, let him pass, and leave the earth to the flowers that carpet the earth wherever he explodes his triumphs. Man is inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is no Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook in the human heart. "Let there be light," we cry, and only the dawn breaks.
”
”
Peter De Vries (The Blood of the Lamb)
“
You are rotting away. You are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn round and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)
“
Human life grows cheaper with every mewling, puking infant that is born. Any form of birth control, no matter how unjust or extreme, is preferable to that tyranny exercised so criminally now by those who, in their filth, stupidity, rut and obnoxious lust, blindly and selfishly birth endlessly forth their disgusting progeny in chaotic, cancerous growth, shoving and forcing the guilty in with the innocent in this already over-stuffed planetary rat-box of accelerating madness and asphyxiation.
”
”
E.E. Rehmus
“
Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
“
Shake the vermin from thy rags! Rise up from thy filth! Thy god is not a moloch who demands human flesh in sacrifice!
”
”
Gustave Flaubert (The Temptation of St. Antony)
“
certain feelings of Platonic Friendship and Sympathy, which are much more dangerous than our plain human filth, in and out, in and out, and it’s over.
”
”
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales)
“
Of all the human filth, I hate human traffickers the most. Wilmington is too small for both of us. It’s either Red Horn or me, and I just finished painting my second living room. I’m not leaving.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Tides (Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years, #1; Kate Daniels, #10.5))
“
Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. “Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”
“Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?”
“Ah!” said Lee. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But “Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph.
Adam said, “Do you believe that, Lee?”
“Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, ‘I couldn’t help it; the way was set.’ But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?”
Adam said, “Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?”
Lee said, “These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars.” Lee’s eyes shone. “You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness.”
Adam said, “I don’t see how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this.”
“Neither do I,” said Lee. “But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
You are rotting away, you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again.
”
”
George Orwell (1984)
“
I felt like if I could look at the worst humanity had to offer, I’d be prepared for anything and nothing could shock or scare me. I didn’t want to be pure; I wanted to go on adventures and roll around in the kind of filth that Oscar Wilde and Hunter S. Thompson had written about.
”
”
Zoe Quinn (Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate)
“
Ripped Jeans & Twenty Dollar Shirt (The Sonnet)
Ripped jeans and twenty dollar shirt,
That's how we'll change the world.
It is okay if your outside is dirty,
Make sure your heart is without dirt.
Too many people wear suits and boots,
In order to cover up the filth within.
Those who have their character intact,
Care not whether their clothes are shinin'.
The world needs purpose, integrity, honor,
None of which is predicated on clothes.
Those who think clothes make the person,
Will never discover any of the civilized roads.
Heart makes the person, heart makes the world.
A world without dirt comes from a heart without dirt.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race)
“
She wanted to take his hand. Her hardest task now as she grew older in the Ministry was to deal with her longing to be touched - hugged, stroked by anyone, any human being - a friend, a lover, a child or even (and here she scented danger) a servant. Of either sex. She prayed about it, asking that God's encircling arms would bring comfort. They did not
”
”
Jane Gardam (Old Filth (Old Filth, #1))
“
I’d seen some shit in my past. I’d committed crimes. I’d done my fair share of filth. But I’d never met someone who thought they could own a human soul before. Part
”
”
Pepper Winters (Pennies (Dollar, #1))
“
Too many people wear suits and boots,
In order to cover up the filth within.
Those who have their character intact,
Care not whether their clothes are shinin'.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race)
“
The vandalism time perpetuates on the human body.
”
”
Irvine Welsh (Filth)
“
The pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
It's a cultural matter. They take pride in their unpride. It reflects their lack of status. Bottom... of the bottom of the human world, and they know it, and they don't like it, and the squalor is like a badge of nonstatus for them. Saying, you want us to be filth, we'll live in filth too. Reveling in it. Wallowing in it. If we're not people, we don't have to be tidy....
”
”
Robert Silverberg (Tower of Glass)
“
Life so far seemed like a kind of dance to him, and he was pleased to discover that he was pretty good at it. Lf there was something hollow underneath it all, a well of fear that sometimes seemed to pull everything else into it and leave him clutching the stone rim for fear of falling into himself, well, that was part of being human, he supposed. That's what the booze was for.
”
”
Nathan Ballingrud (The Visible Filth)
“
there is here a striving, avid and worldly civilisation, of course; these huge and eager markets, to this incessant buying and selling, that make that self evident; but I had no conception of the ubiquitous sense of the holy, no notion of how another world can permeate the secular. Filth, stench, disease, "gross superstition" as our people say, extreme poverty, promiscuous universal defecation, do not affect it: nor do they affect my sense of humanity with which I am surrounded. What an agreeable city it is, where a man may walk around naked in the heat if it so please him
”
”
Patrick O'Brian (H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey & Maturin #3))
“
When we are asked to show our love for God, our desire for him, when he asks us as Jesus asked Peter, 'Lovest thou me?' we have to give proof of it. 'Lovest thou me more than these, more than any human companionship, more than any human love?' It is not filth and ugliness, drugs and drink and perversion he is asking us to prefer him to. He is asking us to prefer him to all beauty and loveliness. To all other love. He is giving us a chance to prove our faith, our hope, our charity. It is as hard and painful as Abraham's ordeal, when he thought he was asked to perform a human sacrifice and immolate his son.
”
”
Dorothy Day (The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus (Plough Spiritual Guides: Backpack Classics))
“
The greatest sacrifice is to unreservedly give the whole of oneself to another, knowing full well that such a gift must be wholly rejected, blithely tossed aside and trampled underfoot as some worthless filth because (much like ourselves) the depravity of the recipient is such that they can only be saved through the death of the giver. And I don’t know of any human who would do that, but I know a God Who did.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
We only ever got pig blood. This wasn't because it was the only type of animal blood the butcher had. "Pigs are dirty," my mum said once. "It's what your body deserves." But it turns out that pigs aren't naturally dirty. Rather, humans keep pigs in dirty conditions, feeding them rotten vegetables, letting the mud in their too-small pens mix with their feces; the filth of the pig is just symptomatic of the sins of the human.
”
”
Claire Kohda (Woman, Eating)
“
Filth, filth, filth, from morning to night. I know they're poor but they could wash. Water is free and soap is cheap. Just look at that arm, nurse.'
The nurse looked and clucked in horror. Francie stood there with the hot flamepoints of shame burning her face. The doctor was a Harvard man, interning at the neighborhood hospital. Once a week, he was obliged to put in a few hours at one of the free clinics. He was going into a smart practice in Boston when his internship was over. Adopting the phraseology of the neighborhood, he referred to his Brooklyn internship as going through Purgatory, when he wrote to his socially prominent fiancee in Boston.
The nurse was as Williamsburg girl... The child of poor Polish immigrants, she had been ambitious, worked days in a sweatshop and gone to school at night. Somehow she had gotten her training... She didn't want anyone to know she had come from the slums.
After the doctor's outburst, Francie stood hanging her head. She was a dirty girl. That's what the doctor meant. He was talking more quietly now asking the nurse how that kind of people could survive; that it would be a better world if they were all sterilized and couldn't breed anymore. Did that mean he wanted her to die? Would he do something to make her die because her hands and arms were dirty from the mud pies?
She looked at the nurse... She thought the nurse might say something like:
Maybe this little girl's mother works and didn't have time to wash her good this morning,' or, 'You know how it is, Doctor, children will play in the dirt.' But what the nurse actuallly said was, 'I know, Isn't it terrible? I sympathize with you, Doctor. There is no excuse for these people living in filth.'
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.
When the needle jabbed, Francie never felt it. The waves of hurt started by the doctor's words were racking her body and drove out all other feeling. While the nurse was expertly tying a strip of gauze around her arm and the doctor was putting his instrument in the sterilizer and taking out a fresh needle, Francie spoke up.
My brother is next. His arm is just as dirty as mine so don't be suprised. And you don't have to tell him. You told me.' They stared at this bit of humanity who had become so strangely articulate. Francie's voice went ragged with a sob. 'You don't have to tell him. Besides it won't do no godd. He's a boy and he don't care if he is dirty.'... As the door closed, she heard the doctor's suprised voice.
I had no idea she'd understand what I was saying.' She heard the nurse say, 'Oh, well,' on a sighing note.
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
[Europeans lived] in dense, settled populations- cities- where human & animal waste breeds vermin, like mice and rats and roaches. Most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, though, didn't live in dense settlements, and even those who lived in villages tended to move with the seasons, taking apart their towns and rebuilding them somewhere else. They didn't accumulate filth, and they didn't live crowds. They suffered from very few infectious diseases.
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
It shouldn’t have surprised her. Didn’t she know better than almost anyone what sort of filth humans were capable of? But it did, every time, a sort of weary, miserable surprise that someone out there had found a new way to create pain. She
”
”
Stacia Kane (Unholy Magic (Downside Ghosts, #2))
“
If men were to colonize the moon or Mars—even with abundant supplies of oxygen, water, and food, as well as adequate protection against heat, cold, and radiation—they would not long retain their humanness, because they would be deprived of those stimuli which only Earth can provide. Similarly, we shall progressively lose our humanness even on Earth if we continue to pour filth into the atmosphere; to befoul soil, lakes, and rivers; to disfigure landscapes with junkpiles; to destroy wild plants and animals that do not contribute to monetary values; and thus transform the globe into an environment alien to our evolutionary past. The quality of human life is inextricably interwoven with the kinds and variety of stimuli man receives from the Earth and the life it harbors, because human nature is shaped biologically and mentally by external nature. (Rene Dubos qtd. in Kaltreider)
”
”
Kurt Kaltreider (American Indian Prophecies)
“
Listen to my last words anywhere. Listen to my last words any world. Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever -
"Don't let them see us. Don't tell them what we are doing -"
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth?
"For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out - "
"Not The Cancer Deal with The Venusians - "
"Not The Green Deal - Don't show them that - "
"Not The Orgasm Death - "
"Not the ovens - "
Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. In Times Square. In Picadilly.
"Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time."
Time for what? More lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words are not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go. Minutes to foe goal -
"Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates -
Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies. Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth. Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere. You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?
What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you; "the word." Alien Word "the." "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee" in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open.
”
”
William S. Burroughs (Nova Express (The Nova Trilogy, #2))
“
That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains—they "cannot smell each other!" The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness—the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:—just as much as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES—it is a noble tendency—it also SEPARATES.—The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human. And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
The past few years have certainly disenchanted us, but they have also shown us that what is human is still valid; they have taught us that it is all a question of the individual human being. After all, in the end, what was left was the human being! Because it was the human being that survived amidst all the filth ofthe recent past.
”
”
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
“
The two of you well fed, tanned, pretty, Beg pardon folks, just passing through, through the cesspool your bad intentions and good intentions created, the sewage in which human beings must make lives for themselves swimming in centuries of your filth. What did you imagine yourselves doing. What do you imagine you're doing with me. What gives you the right to rub the privilege of your whiteness, your immunity, in dying people's faces. Slinking through a place so down and out even niggers with nothing to lose avoid it if they can. Dog-eat-dog back-of-the-wall and at night too. Who the fuck did you think you were. What kind of daydream were you strolling around in.
”
”
John Edgar Wideman (God's Gym: Stories)
“
A shadow has fallen in the room. The baby pays no attention - she bites the foreign finger, cooing and squealing. I feel a lump rising in my throat. She seems like a miracle to me, pink and white with copper curls, flowering here in this desolate, half-looted room, among us adult human beings so mired in filth. And suddenly I realize why the warriors are drawn to the little baby.
”
”
Anonymous (A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary)
“
February 3 The Recognised Ban of Relationship We are made as the filth of the world. 1 Corinthians 4:13 These words are not an exaggeration. The reason they are not true of us who call ourselves ministers of the gospel is not that Paul forgot the exact truth in using them, but that we have too many discreet affinities to allow ourselves to be made refuse. “Filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ” is not an evidence of sanctification, but of being “separated unto the gospel.” “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you,” says Peter. If we do think it strange concerning the things we meet with, it is because we are craven-hearted. We have discreet affinities that keep us out of the mire—“I won’t stoop; I won’t bend.” You do not need to, you can be saved by the skin of your teeth if you like; you can refuse to let God count you as one separated unto the gospel. Or you may say—“I do not care if I am treated as the offscouring of the earth as long as the Gospel is proclaimed.” A servant of Jesus Christ is one who is willing to go to martyrdom for the reality of the gospel of God. When a merely moral man or woman comes in contact with baseness and immorality and treachery, the recoil is so desperately offensive to human goodness that the heart shuts up in despair. The marvel of the Redemptive Reality of God is that the worst and the vilest can never get to the bottom of His love. Paul did not say that God separated him to show what a wonderful man He could make of him, but “to reveal His son in me.
”
”
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
“
But even more than by the filth of its organs, the flower is betrayed by the fragility of its corolla: thus, far from answering the demands of human ideas, it is the sign of their failure. In fact, after a very short period of glory the marvelous corolla rots indecently in the sun, thus becoming, for the plant, a garish withering. Risen from the stench of the manure pile---even though it seemed for a moment to have escaped it in a flight of angelic and lyrical purity---the flower seems to relapse abruptly into its original squalor: the most ideal is rapidly reduced to a wisp of aerial manure. For flowers do not age honestly like leaves, which lose nothing of their beauty, even after they have died; flowers wither like old and overly made-up dowagers, and they die ridiculously on stems that seemed to carry them to the clouds.
”
”
Georges Bataille (Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939)
“
I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!
”
”
Jerome K. Jerome (Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow)
“
The roads that lead to truth and honesty are cut by flooding, filth, dog turds, lies, and blackouts, but why did he obstinately maintain his belief that a better world was possible? Why did he strive to reduce humanity to the dreams and quotations he gleaned on the pages of his texts? It’s called cowardice, perhaps even amnesia, or indeed a combination of the two. The world is beyond redemption, as Requiem put it. But supposing
”
”
Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Tram 83)
“
I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness)
“
Your short understanding, your clipped mind, your hollow heart, will make more of mankind than it has the power to become. Make of a man what you will, yet he cannot be more than this I say to you, with the leave of all pure women: a human is conceived in sin, nourished with impure, unspeakable feculence in the maternal body, born naked and smeared like a beehive; a mass of refuse, a churn of filth, a dish for worms, a stinkhouse, a repulsive washtub, a rancid carcass, a mildewed crate, a bottomless sack, a perforated pocket, a bellows, a rapacious maw, a reeking flagon of urine, a malodorous pail, a deceptive marionette-show, a loamy robber’s den, an insatiably slaking trough, a painted delusion. Let recognise who will: every human created to completion has nine holes in his body; out of all these there flows such repellent filth that nothing could be more impure. You would never see human beauty, if you had the eyes of a lynx, and your gaze could penetrate to the innards; you would shudder at the sight. Strip the dressmaker’s colouring from the loveliest of ladies, and you will see a shameful puppet, a hastily withering flower, a sparkle of little durance and a soon decomposing clod of earth! Show me a handful of beauty of all the belles who lived a hundred years ago, excluding those painted on the wall, and you shall have the Kaiser’s crown! Let love flow away, let grief flow away! Let the Rhine run its course like other waters, you wise lad from Assville!
”
”
Johannes von Saaz (Death and the Ploughman)
“
THE ANTHEM OF HOPE
Tiny footprints in mud, metal scraps among thistles
Child who ambles barefooted through humanity’s war
An Elderflower in mud, landmines hidden in bristles
Blood clings to your feet, your wee hands stiff and sore
You who walk among trenches, midst our filth and our gore
Box of crayons in hand, your tears tumble like crystals
Gentle, scared little boy, at the heel of Hope Valley,
The grassy heel of Hope Valley.
And the bombs fall-fall-fall
Down the slopes of Hope Valley
Bayonets cut-cut-cut
Through the ranks of Hope Valley
Napalm clouds burn-burn-burn
All who fight in Hope Valley,
All who fall in Hope Valley.
Bullets fly past your shoulder, fireflies light the sky
Child who digs through the trenches for his long sleeping father
You plant a kiss on his forehead, and you whisper goodbye
Vain corpses, brave soldiers, offered as cannon fodder
Nothing is left but a wall; near its pallor you gather
Crayon ready, you draw: the memory of a lie
Kind, sad little boy, sketching your dream of Hope Valley
Your little dream of Hope Valley.
Missiles fly-fly-fly
Over the fields of Hope Valley
Carabines shoot-shoot-shoot
The brave souls of Hope Valley
And the tanks shell-shell-shell
Those who toiled for Hope Valley,
Those who died for Hope Valley.
In the light of gunfire, the little child draws the valley
Every trench is a creek; every bloodstain a flower
No battlefield, but a garden with large fields ripe with barley
Ideations of peace in his dark, final hour
And so the child drew his future, on the wall of that tower
Memories of times past; your tiny village lush alley
Great, brave little boy, the future hope of Hope Valley
The only hope of Hope Valley.
And the grass grows-grows-grows
On the knolls of Hope Valley
Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom
Across the hills of Hope Valley
The midday sun shines-shines-shines
On the folk of Hope Valley
On the dead of Hope Valley
From his Aerodyne fleet
The soldier faces the carnage
Uttering words to the fallen
He commends their great courage
Across a wrecked, tower wall
A child’s hand limns the valley
And this drawing speaks volumes
Words of hope, not of bally
He wipes his tears and marvels
The miracle of Hope Valley
The only miracle of Hope Valley
And the grass grows-grows-grows
Midst all the dead of Hope Valley
Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom
For all the dead of Hope Valley
The evening sun sets-sets-sets
On the miracle of Hope Valley
The only miracle of Hope Valley
(lyrics to "the Anthem of Hope", a fictional song featured in Louise Blackwick's Neon Science-Fiction novel "5 Stars".
”
”
Louise Blackwick (5 Stars)
“
It was in this last job that Osman formed most of his convictions about his fellow human beings. No one should try to philosophize on the nature of humanity until they had worked in a public toilet for a couple of weeks and seen the things that people did, simply because they could – destroying the water hose on the wall, breaking the door handle, drawing nasty graffiti everywhere, peeing on the hand towels, depositing every kind of filth and muck all over the place, knowing that someone else would have to clean it up.
”
”
Elif Shafak (10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World)
“
final factor that helped agriculture take off was that early farming was not as laborious and miserable as it later became. The very first farmers certainly had to work hard, but we know from archaeological sites that they still hunted animals, did some gathering, and initially practiced cultivation on a modest scale. Farming pioneers surely had challenging lives, but the popular image of the incessant drudgery, filth, and misery of being a farmer probably applies more to later peasants in feudal systems than to early Neolithic farmers. A
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease)
“
This movement to which he had dedicated his life could not be snuffed out by a few opportunists, a sackful of dollars and a cunt in the Kremlin. It was as old and as strong as the human spirit itself. It would come back, with fresh vigour, soon, very soon. It might have a different name, a different banner. But men and women would always want to walk that path, that tricky uphill path across the river of stones and through the damp cloud, because they knew that at the end they would burst into the bright sunshine and see the mountain top clear above them. Men and women dreamed of that moment. They would link arms again. They would have a new song – no longer ‘Stepping the Red Pathway’ as it had been on Rykosha Mountain. But they would sing this new song to the old tune. And they would gather themselves to make that mighty second jump. Then the ground would shake and all the capitalists and imperialists and plant-loving Fascists and filth and scum and renegades and fucking intellectuals and boy prosecutors and Judases with birdshit on their skulls would shit themselves one final, mighty time.
”
”
Julian Barnes (The Porcupine)
“
Aha!” laughed the high queen with almost girlish delight. She slammed the flat of her little hand on the nearby table and the dragon statue leapt. “The idealist speaks again! You actually think the humans can live happily ever after with the elvkarin?” She narrowed her bright eyes, looking at Neferre in pity and amazement. “Don’t you even yet understand? Don’t you know who you are? The dragons were not mindless beasts – they were people, fierce and proud! Good dragons, bad dragons, dragons who were fucking indifferent -- Nineveh exterminated them like so much filth.
”
”
Ash Gray (Time's Arrow (A Time of Darkness #1))
“
This “demoiselle” was the type of a woman who is never to be met with except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the pavement, like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris before human industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass decanters and sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She is therefore a being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times by the painter’s brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal of the etcher, she still escapes analysis, because she cannot be caught and rendered in all her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic Paris itself.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Ferragus, chef des Dévorants)
“
That even though it feels like God to kill another human being, you are the opposite of God. Every foul word you speak about another person, every item you soil, every person you harm. That is not the work of a God, but of a maggot. [...] And this world has lots of maggots. They multiply and feed on the vulnerable as though it were their natural right. [...] But for every one of your kind, there are Builders, and there are Creators. In the end, they will see Him. They will see the Kingdom of Heaven and you will be alone floating in darkness. You will see a light on the horizon and no matter how long you float in your filth, you will never reach it. That will be your punishment - to see a Paradise you cannot ruin.
”
”
Samantha Kolesnik (True Crime)
“
It was accepted wisdom almost everywhere in the nineteenth century that the poor were poor because they were born to be. Although a few impoverished people might generously be described as undeserving, most were by nature “improvident, reckless and intemperate, and with habitual avidity for sensual gratification,” as one government report crisply summarized it. Even Friedrich Engels, a far more sympathetic observer than most, could write in The Condition of the Working Class in England: “The facile character of the Irishman, his crudity, which places him but little above the savage, his contempt for all humane enjoyments, in which his very crudeness makes him incapable of sharing, his filth and poverty, all favour drunkenness.
”
”
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
“
Speaking of the happy new year, I wonder if any year ever had less chance of being happy. It’s as though the whole race were indulging in a kind of species introversion — as though we looked inward on our neuroses. And the thing we see isn’t very pretty.
Before the year is over, I think I will be looking back longingly on the Gulf of Lower California — that sea of mirages and timelessness. It is a very magical place.
It is cold and clear here now - the leaves all fallen from the trees and only the frogs are very happy. Great cheering sections of frogs singing all the time. The earth is moist and water is seeping out of the ground everywhere. So we go into this happy new year, knowing that our species has learned nothing, can, as a race, learn nothing — that the experience of ten thousand years has made no impression on the instincts of the million years that preceded.
Maybe you can find some vague theology that will give you hope. Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one has a mirror, that two forces are necessary in man before he is man. I asked Paul de Kruif once if he would like to cure all disease and he said yes. Then I suggested that the man he loved and wanted to cure was a product of all his filth and disease and meanness, his hunger and cruelty. Cure those and you would have not man but an entirely new species you wouldn’t recognize and probably wouldn’t like.
There it is — It is interesting to watch the German efficiency, which, from the logic of the machine is efficient but which (I suspect) from the mechanics of the human species is suicidal. Certainly man thrives best (or has at least) in a state of semi-anarchy. Then he has been strong, inventive, reliant, moving. But cage him with rules, feed him and make him healthy and I think he will die as surely as a caged wolf dies. I should not be surprised to see a cared for, thought for, planned for nation disintegrate, while a ragged, hungry, lustful nation survived. Surely no great all-encompassing plan has ever succeeded. And so I'll look to see this German plan collapse because they do not know enough to plan for everything.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Steinbeck: A Life in Letters)
“
In some ways, to explore ancient Rome from the twenty-first century is rather like walking on a tightrope, a very careful balancing act. If you look down on one side, everything seems reassuringly familiar: there are conversations going on that we almost join, about the nature of freedom or problems of sex; there are buildings and monuments we recognise and family life lived out in ways we understand, with all their troublesome adolescents; and there are jokes that we ‘get’. On the other side, it seems completely alien territory. That means not just the slavery, the filth (there was hardly any such thing as refuse collection in ancient Rome), the human slaughter in the arena and the death from illnesses whose cure we now take for granted; but also the newborn babies thrown away on rubbish heaps, the child brides and the flamboyant eunuch priests.
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
Roman history also demands a particular sort of imagination. In some ways, to explore ancient Rome from the twenty-first century is rather like walking on a tightrope, a very careful balancing act. If you look down on one side, everything seems reassuringly familiar: there are conversations going on that we almost join, about the nature of freedom or problems of sex; there are buildings and monuments we recognise and family life lived out in ways we understand, with all their troublesome adolescents; and there are jokes that we ‘get’. On the other side, it seems completely alien territory. That means not just the slavery, the filth (there was hardly any such thing as refuse collection in ancient Rome), the human slaughter in the arena and the death from illnesses whose cure we now take for granted; but also the newborn babies thrown away on rubbish heaps, the child brides and the flamboyant eunuch priests.
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
The reports about these contracted moderation companies are grim. In one investigation, The Verge found that employees at a Facebook moderation office in Phoenix, Arizona, were developing drug habits to cope.22 They turned to dark humor. They suffered panic attacks. They had sex with each other as a form of “trauma bonding.” All the while, social media companies keep these employees at arm’s length by hiring them as contractors, not full-time employees. I have no doubt that social media companies will try new techniques to address these problems. At some point there will probably be artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to accurately moderate images and eliminate the need for constant human exposure to filth. But given the track record of techniques, I suspect such AI will also introduce new, unanticipated problems. In any event, the human capacity for imaginative evil will always be one step ahead of AI.
”
”
Alan Noble (You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World)
“
Our present economic, social and international arrangements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness. We begin by lacking charity towards Nature, so that instead of trying to co-operate with Tao or the Logos on the inanimate and sub-human levels, we try to dominate and exploit, we waste the earth's mineral resources, ruin its soil, ravage its forests, pour filth into its rivers and poisonous fumes into its air. From lovelessness in relation to Nature we advance to lovelessness in relation to art - a lovelessness so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts and set up various kinds of mass-production by machines in their place. And of course this lovelessness in regard to art is at the same time a lovelessness in regard to the human beings who have to perform the fool-proof and grace-proof tasks imposed by our mechanical art-surrogates and by the interminable paper work connected with mass-production and mass-distribution.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)
“
That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains—they "cannot smell each other!" The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness—the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:—just as much as such a tendency distinguishes—it is a noble tendency—it also separates.—The pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human. And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
That which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity. What does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains―they "cannot smell each other!" The highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness―the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. Any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:―just as much as such a tendency DISTINGUISHES―it is a noble tendency―it also SEPARATES.―The pity of the saint is pity for the FILTH of the human, all-too-human. And there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
The thing that separates two people the most is a difference in their sense and degree of cleanliness.
All the good behavior, mutual utility, and goodwill in the world will not help: what matters, in the end, is that they “can’t stand the smell of each other!”
The highest instinct of cleanliness puts someone afflicted with it into the strangest and most dangerous solitude, in the form of a holy saint: because this is what holiness is – the highest spiritualization of this instinct.
Some sort of shared knowledge of an indescribable abundance of joy in bathing, some sort of lust and craving constantly drives the soul out of the night and into the morning, out of dullness and gloom into light, radiance, profundity, finesse.
However much a tendency like this characterizes somebody (it is a noble tendency), it separates him out as well.
The pity of the saint is a pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human. And there are degrees and heights where he feels even pity as a form of pollution, as filth.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
“
I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is called — life.
Just look at these superfluous people! They steal for themselves the works of inventors and the treasures of the wise: they call their theft culture — and they turn everything to sickness and calamity.
Just look at these superfluous people! They are always ill, they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it. They desire power and especially the lever of power, plenty of money — these impotent people!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another and so scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
They all strive towards the throne: it is a madness they have — as if happiness sat upon the throne! Often filth sits upon the throne — and often the throne upon filth, too.
They all seem madmen to me and clambering apes and too vehement. Their idol, that cold monster, smells unpleasant to me: all of them, all these idolaters, smell unpleasant to me.
My brothers, do you then want to suffocate in the fumes of their animal mouths and appetites? Better to break the window and leap into the open air.
Avoid this bad odour! Leave the idolatry of the superfluous!
Avoid this bad odour! Leave the smoke of these human sacrifices!
The earth still remains free for great souls. Many places — the odour of tranquil seas blowing about them — are still empty for solitaries and solitary couples.
A free life still remains for great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty!
Only there, where the state ceases, does the man who is not superfluous begin: does the song of the necessary man, the unique and irreplaceable melody, begin.
There, where the state ceases — look there, my brothers. Do you not see it: the rainbow and the bridges to the Superman?
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
“
But when he had served the god faithfully for eleven days, it sometimes happened that other powers gained the ascendancy over him, and he would be seized with a violent craving for the coarse enjoyment of gross pleasures. Then he would plunge into dissipations, feverish with that human thirst for self-destruction which yearns, when the blood burns as hotly as blood can burn, for degradation, perverseness, filth, and smut, with precisely the measure of strength possessed by another equally human longing, the longing to keep one's self greater than one's self and purer.
In these moments there was but little that was rough and coarse enough for him, and when they had passed, it was long before he could regain his balance; for in truth these excesses were not natural to him; he was too healthy for them, too little poisoned by brooding. In a sense, they came as a rebound from his devotion to the higher spirits of his art, almost like a revenge, as though his nature had been violated by the pursuit of those idealistic aims which choice, aided by circumstances, had made his own.
”
”
Jens Peter Jacobsen (Niels Lyhne)
“
For me, the most disturbing realization has been that, if you happen to be a female farmed animal, your quality of life drops to near zero. A sow will not know one ounce of human kindness during her entire life. In my experience, these are the most abused of all farmed animals. At breeding operations they are treated as 'bacon-makers.' They live in crates, row upon row, as far as their eyes can see, throughout their adult lives. They cannot even turn around between these bars. They live in filth, with rats (who sometimes eat the bodies of their dead piglets). Their world is one of such complete, unending hell; deprived of all comforts and stimulation, that they are driven mad. These intelligent, sensitive farmed animals return what they sense from us; even the boars--intact males--have been gentle with me. Their babies, the ones who are slightly too small or slightly too weak, are 'PACed'--an industry term meaning 'Pounded Against Concrete.' These piglets are swung by their rear legs, smashing their heads into a wall or concrete floor in order to kill them--all in front of their helpless mothers.
”
”
Twyla François
“
Ancestors
To tell the truth, we should not exist. We, not any collective plural, just you and me. Let us use our imaginations to visualize for a moment the circumstances and conditions of the life of our parents, then our grandparents, then great-grandparents, thus further and further back. Even if among them all there happened to be wealthy individuals or men of privilege, the stench and filth in which they lived, as that then was the rule, would have astonished us who use showers and toilets. What was even more certain was among them the presence of starvelings, for whom a piece of dry bread in pre-harvest time meant happiness. Our ancestors died like flies from epidemics, from starvation, from wars, though children swarmed, for every twelve of them only one or two survived. And what strange tribes, what ugly snouts behinds you and me, what bloody rites in honor of gods carved in the trunk of a linden tree! Back to those who are stalking through the undergrowth of a murky primeval forest with chipped stones for their only weapons, in order to split the skulls of their enemies. It would seem as if we had only parents and that's all, but those other pre-pre-predecessors exist, and with them their afflictions, manias, mental illnesses, syphilis, tuberculosis, and whatnot, and how do you know they do not continue on in you? And what was the probability that among the children of your great-great-grandparents the one survived who would beget your ancestor? And what the probability that this would repeat itself in the next generation?
Altogether, a very slim chance that we would be born in these skins, as these, not other, individuals, in whom the genes met those of the devil knows what whores and oafs. The very fact that our species survived and even multiplied beyond measure is astonishing, for it had much against it, and the primeval forest full of animals stronger than humans may serve till now as a metaphor for man's precarious situation - let us add viruses, bacteria, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, but also his own works, atomic weapons and the pollution of nature. Our species should have disappeared a long time ago, and it is still alive, incredibly resistant. That you and I happen to be part of it should be enough to give us pause for meditation.
”
”
Czesław Miłosz (Road-side Dog)
“
I want to state very clearly that in that period when human beings had not yet become ashamed of their cruelty, life on earth was happier than it is today, now that we have our pessimists. The darkening of heaven over men’s heads has always increased alarmingly in proportion to the growth of human beings’ shame before human beings. The tired, pessimistic look, the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy denial stemming from disgust with life — these are not the signs of the wickedest eras of human beings. It’s much more the case that they first come to light as the swamp plants they are when the swamp to which they belong is there — I mean the sickly mollycoddling and moralizing, thanks to which the animal “man” finally learns to feel shame about all his instincts.
On his way to becoming an “angel” (not to use a harsher word here), man cultivated for himself that upset stomach and that furry tongue which not only made the joy and innocence of the animal repulsive but also made life itself distasteful: — so that now and then he stands there before himself, holds his nose, and with Pope Innocent III disapproves and makes a catalogue of his nastiness (“conceived in filth, disgustingly nourished in his mother’s body, developed out of evil material stuff, stinking horribly, a secretion of spit, urine, and excrement”).
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals)
“
We speak of the things which you see with your own eyes, which We both bemoan. Depravity exults; science is impudent; liberty, dissolute. The holiness of the sacred is despised; the majesty of divine worship is not only disapproved by evil men, but defiled and held up to ridicule. Hence sound doctrine is perverted and errors of all kinds spread boldly. The laws of the sacred, the rights, institutions, and discipline — none are safe from the audacity of those speaking evil. Our Roman See is harassed violently and the bonds of unity are daily loosened and severed. The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude. The obedience due bishops is denied and their rights are trampled underfoot. Furthermore, academies and schools resound with new, monstrous opinions, which openly attack the Catholic faith; this horrible and nefarious war is openly and even publicly waged. Thus, by institutions and by the example of teachers, the minds of the youth are corrupted and a tremendous blow is dealt to religion and the perversion of morals is spread. So the restraints of religion are thrown off, by which alone kingdoms stand. We see the destruction of public order, the fall of principalities, and the overturning of all legitimate power approaching. Indeed this great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous, and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship’s hold, a congealed mass of all filth.
”
”
Pope Gregory XVI (Mirari Vos)
“
It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament. For religious people who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched people strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought or other and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs.
It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German people should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo-jumbo. So long as the wisdom, particularly of the Old Testament, remained exclusively in the Latin of the Church, there was little danger that sensible people would become the victims of illusions as the result of studying the Bible. But since the Bible became common property, a whole heap of people have found opened to them lines of religious thought which—particularly in conjunction with the German characteristic of persistent and somewhat melancholy meditation—as often as not turned them into religious maniacs. When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen, one realises why movements such as that of the Flagellants came inevitably into existence in the Middle Ages in Germany.
As a sane German, one is flabbergasted to think that German human beings could have let themselves be brought to such a pass by Jewish filth and priestly twaddle, that they were little different from the howling dervish of the Turks and the negroes, at whom we laugh so scornfully. It angers one to think that, while in other parts of the globe religious teaching like that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed offers an undeniably broad basis for the religious-minded, Germans should have been duped by a theological exposition devoid of all honest depth.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
“
Designori's face had clouded over once more. "Some times," he said resignedly, "it seems to me that we have not only two different languages and ways of expressing ourselves, each of which can only vaguely be translated into the other, but that we are altogether and fundamentally different creatures who can never understand each other. Which of us is really the authentic and integral human being, you or me? Every so often I doubt that either of us is. There were times when I looked up to you members of the Order and Glass Bead Game players with such reverence, such a sense of inferiority, and such envy that you might have been gods or supermen, forever serene, forever playing, forever enjoying your own existences, forever immune to suffering. At other times you seemed to me either pitiable or contemptible, eunuchs, artificially confined to an eternal childhood, child-like and childish in your cool, tightly fenced, neatly tidied playground and kindergarten, where every nose is carefully wiped and every troublesome emotion is soothed, every dangerous thought repressed, where everyone plays nice, safe, bloodless games for a lifetime and every jagged stirring of life, every strong feeling, every genuine passion, every rapture is promptly checked, deflected, and neutralized by meditation therapy. Isn't it artificial, sterilized, didactically pruned world, a mere sham world in which you cravenly vegetate, a world without vices, without passions, without hunger, without sap and salt, a world without family, without mothers, without children, almost without women? The instinctual life is tamed by meditation. For generations you have left to others dangerous, daring, and responsible things like economics, law, and politics. Cowardly and well-protected, fed by others, and having few burdensome duties, you lead your drones' lives, and so that they won't be too boring you busy yourselves with all these erudite specialties, count syllables and letters, make music, and play the Glass Bead Game, while outside in the filth of the world poor harried people live real lives and do real work.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)
“
The whole reason I’d written about him so freely was that I never expected to face him in person and could therefore imagine him in ways that gratified my conception of who he should be: a white trash savant imbued with junkyard political savvy. In truth, I found the magazine completely disgusting—as I was meant to, obviously: it had long been the most reviled instance of mass-circulation pornography around and used people like me (shame-ridden bourgeois feminists and other elites) for target practice, with excremental grossness among its weapons of choice. It was also particularly nasty to academics who in its imagination are invariably prissy and uptight—sadly I’m one of this breed too. (A cartoon academic to his wife: “Eat your pussy? You forget, Gladys, I have a Ph.D.”)1 Maybe I yearned to be rescued from my primness, though Flynt was obviously no one’s idea of a white knight. (Of course, being attracted to what you’re also repelled by is not exactly unknown in human history.) For some reason, I tend to be drawn to excess: to men who laugh too loud and drink too much, who are temperamentally and romantically immoderate, have off-kilter politics and ideas. Aside from that, it also happened that in the period during which my ideas about things were being formed, the bawdy French satirist Rabelais was enjoying an intellectual revival in my sorts of circles, along with the idea of the “carnivalesque”: the realm of subversion and sacrilege—the grotesque, the unruly, the profane—where the lower bodily stratum and everything that emerges from it is celebrated for supposedly subverting established pieties and hierarchies. I was intrigued by these kinds of ideas, despite—or more likely because of—my aforementioned primness. Contemplating where one might locate these carnivalesque impulses in our own time I’d immediately thought of Hustler, even though back then I had only the vaguest idea what bodily abhorrences awaited me within its shrink-wrapped covers (as if a thin sheet of plastic were sufficient to prevent seepage from the filth within). In fact, the first time I peeled away the protective casing and tried to actually read a copy, I was so disgusted I threw it away, I didn’t even want it in the house.
”
”
Laura Kipnis (Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation)
“
Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society. Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead. "Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey. It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and other essays (Illustrated))
“
You are rotting away," he said; "you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn round and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.
”
”
George Orwell
“
The womb of the world births us. My filth comes from the same earthwork that gives rise to all stories. My interior light connects me with all the other creatures that inhabit this world of rocks, air, grass, woods, and water. My genetic code links me inextricably with all of nature. I enter the medley in the river of life with the ability to respond as life unfolds before my childlike eyes. My homemade medicinal poultice might not be of any benefit to other people. Nonetheless, we should each write our stories because each of us aims to attain a greater degree of awareness of our own authenticity. We owe a moral obligation to our family, friends, and ourselves as well as to the community to make a determined effort to wring the most out of life. We must applaud all efforts to investigate the human condition. Even if my writing amounts to nothing more than a clumsy attempt to travel the same tracks other people burnished with much more insight, clarity, precision, and style, it is an act of self-definition to ascribe to any philosophy. Philosophy represents a living charter; it is a life of action.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
am in so much trouble! I’m ruined! I’m just a human being—fallible and stammering. My lips are encrusted with filth; and I live among people just like me. But here I am, and I’ve seen with my very own eyes none other than the King, the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies.
”
”
Anonymous (The Voice Bible: Step Into the Story of Scripture)
“
We only ever got pig blood. This wasn't because it was the only type of animal blood the butcher had. "Pigs are dirty," my mum said once. "It's what your body deserves." But it turns out that pigs aren't naturally dirty. Rather, humans keep pigs in dirty conditions, feeding them rotten vegetables, letting the mud in their too-small pens mix with their feces; the filth of the pig is just symptomatic of the sins of the human. Wild pigs eat plants. They've even been shown to clean fruit in creeks before eating it, and they never eat or roll around in their own feces. I told my mum this, but she was adamant that the pig was the filthiest animal and was what we deserved.
”
”
Claire Kohda (Woman, Eating)
“
A world that confuses luxury with success, has absolutely zero understanding of the human condition. That's why they idolize rich and filthy celebrities with private jets and rolls royce, as some sort of demigods. If this is your idea of success, then you guys are more disgustingly primitive than the wildlife in the amazon. At least, wild animals don't pretend to be civilized.
Riches maketh filth, filth pursue riches. To live a life of luxury, or to dream of a life of luxury, doesn't make us ambitious, it only exposes the moron that we are. A species that has not realized simplicity as the way of life, will never in a million years have a society without disease and disparity.
I won't mince my words, and tell you straight. Wanna be a decent human being? Stay away from luxury. Because luxury is a violation of human rights, human health, and above all, human character.
It's funny really! Some people can't afford two wholesome meals a day, while others live with a private airport in their backyard. Some parents work their butt off to keep the clothes on their children's back, while others shower their kids with lamborghinis and teslas. If this doesn't open your eyes, perhaps you should try lobotomy. I'm sure you can find some unlicensed surgeon somewhere who'd do it for you if you offer them a trip to the bahamas, or better yet, a trip to space in your own spaceship.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None)
“
C. was reminded of another little significant-seeming episode: Once he’d had to spend a night in jail in A.—the main town of the district he came from—and realized right away that he’d never get a single minute’s sleep in the hole they’d locked him up in. His cell was probably used as a drunk tank; traces of the catastrophes attendant to the drying-out process were visible all around… In the GDR, thought C., succumbing to alcohol still made for indelible images, so it was not entirely unreasonable for writers and artists to spend their time drinking. The cell whose door slammed behind him consisted of several cubic yards of bad smells, and contained a cot, a broken-down chair, and a cracked toilet that wouldn’t stop running and stood in a puddle of sludge. On the wall behind the cot, a broad swath of vomit trailed down, already dried; the dim light of a 25 watt bulb showed the walls covered from top to bottom with unidentifiable filth—possibly human excrement—spatters of blood, and countless inscriptions: scratched messages and addresses. It was enough reading material to last him all night. One of the first slogans he read stated straight out: Long live capitalism.
”
”
Wolfgang Hilbig (The Interim)
“
If the bible comes and peddles phobia,
I'll burn such bible to ashes.
If the koran comes and peddles violence,
I'll tear up such koran to pieces.
If the vedas come and peddle superstition,
I'll crush such filth to pulp with my foot.
If the constitution comes and peddles war,
As concerned parent I'll grab their makers,
And spank out all their dormant good.
Even if some two-bit God comes,
And peddles division,
I'll divide him so many times,
Even to his apostles,
He'll bear no recognition.
And a little word of advise to those,
Priming their guns, swords and tridents.
When a volcano erupts,
Insects are supposed to run,
Not hide behind bows, arrows and bibles.
Brain is mightier than bullets,
Heart is mightier than the homunculus.
When a 3 pound brain falls on bigoted bugs,
There is no running, only burning to cinders.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Amor Apocalypse: Canım Sana İhtiyacım)
“
In many discourses, parks are posited as the best of urbanity, as an unmitigated “good” that represents all that cities can and should be. Parks are purportedly natural salves for the disordered immorality and filth of urban life, pools of respite, beauty and virtue. But those complicated and complicating claims make multiple contradictory and dubious arguments for human social and political life that are not easily dislodged or disentangled. Those claims are always bound up with rationalities of whiteness and colonial ordering: parks bring structured comprehensibility and access to the otherwise unruly “wilds,” cleansed of any savage and uncooperative residents, and disallow any activities that do not adhere to certain orders. A huge amount of work is expended on park design to ensure that they adhere exactly to settler colonial re-orderings of occupation.
”
”
Matt Hern (On This Patch of Grass: City Parks on Occupied Land)
“
The slanting rays of the autumn sun,
the coldness of spring water,
the towering trees,
the birds,
the aquatic creatures,
the reptiles, and the flow of life!
In a moment,
I surrendered myself
to the icy water that burned to the bone!
I loved the cold, but feared it at the same time.
When the air is cold,
when your being is frozen,
you will experience a kind of coma that enforces justice.
When in life,
pleasure has been withheld from you,
the cold also takes away the joy of expressing your pain.
I looked at the sky,
my wandering mind and free spirit
fled to the Arctic and Antarctic!
It’s cold and frozen there too.
Always cold, and sometimes dark for long periods!
I wanted to surrender my whole being to the frost,
to let complete suppression and endless cold
dominate me!
I was overwhelmed.
If awareness is a match,
then doctrines, religions, every group, sect, country, and ideology,
are other matches to ignite hell for you!
Awareness, spirituality, humanity, or simply put, absolute perfection and beauty,
I imagine as being seven layers deep in hell,
while compounded ignorance feels like a clear and moderate sky.
The middle ground wasn’t for me,
so I found the only solution
was to seal hell and bury it
under thousands upon thousands of icy stones!
At that moment, as my body shivered in the spring water,
my soul hovered around the Arctic and Antarctic.
Ah, another spark,
another thought of winter creeping into my mind!
My mind said, the Arctic and Antarctic, over time,
through the sun’s rays or human filth, will eventually fall and melt,
what if someone arrives with unconditional love
and pulls you back to that same hell?
I was tired of empty words and impossible thoughts, but my mind was right!
I remembered the sky,
the sky always holds an answer!
Mars!
That was it,
Mars!
Mars,
which billions of years ago was a cradle of life!
What did it do?
It lost its atmosphere due to its cold core,
and the sun’s kindness wiped life away into space.
The remaining water froze somewhere inside it,
and never flowed again.
Oh, my Mars,
you are my role model.
First, I must destroy awareness and render it useless,
then I’ll seek out love to cleanse what remains of my emotions and let it go.
But Mars,
what should I do with the flowing waters of love
that will freeze inside me?
What if one day a madman from nowhere comes and gets the idea
to revive me, seeking refuge in me?
#Arash_Ghadir #ArashGhadir
”
”
Arash_Ghadir
“
What were we doing to our world? How could we assume our species was developing and becoming more civilized when an animal once worshipped had been wiped out by neglect, greed, and human filth?
”
”
Jonathan Watts (When A Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind -- Or Destroy It)
“
They couldn't understand that every time I entered the slum I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts. They couldn't understand what I meant when I talked about the purity of the slum: they'd been there, and seen the wretchedness and filth for themselves. They saw no purity. But they hadn't lived in those miraculous acres, and they hadn't learned that to survive in such a writhe of hope and sorrow the people had to be scrupulously and heartbreakingly honest. That was the source of their purity: above all things, they were true to themselves.
”
”
Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
“
the American journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote after trekking across much of China in 1940. No worse luck could befall a human being than to be born and live there, unless by some golden chance you happened to be born one of the .00000099 percent who had power, money, privilege (and even then, even then). I pitied them all, I saw no tolerable future for them, and I longed to escape away from what I had escaped into: the age-old misery, filth, hopelessness and my own claustrophobia inside that enormous country. Skinny, sweaty rickshaw pullers strained at their large-wheeled contraptions to provide transportation to the rich. The scenes of nearly naked coolies towing barges up canals and rivers, leaning so far against their harnesses as to be almost horizontal to the ground, were an emblem, picturesque and horrible at the same time, of the unrelenting strain of everyday life in China, as were such other standard images as the women with leathery skin barefoot in the muck planting and weeding, the farmers covered in sweat at the foot pumps along fetid canals or carrying their loads of brick or straw on balancing poles slung over their shoulders or moving slowly and patiently behind water buffalo pulling primitive plows. The fly-specked hospitals, the skinny, crippled beggars, the thousands and thousands of villages made of baked mud whose houses, as one visitor described them, were “smoky, with gray walls and black tiled roofs; the inhabitants, wearing the invariable indigo-dyed cloth … moving about their business in an inextricable confusion of scraggy chickens, pigs, dogs, and babies.
”
”
Richard Bernstein (China 1945: Mao's Revolution and America's Fateful Choice)
“
Simon explained, “Demons are the spirits of the Nephilim. You will remember the readings in synagogue from the Scriptures that in the days of Noah, the fallen Sons of God mated with the daughters of men. Their unholy offspring were the Nephilim, giant hybrid bastards of angel and human essence. This unholy mixing of heaven and earth, was a violation of the separation of creation. But it was also the attempt to corrupt the human bloodline of the promised Messiah who would crush the head of the Serpent.” Peter interjected, “The Nephilim were killed in the Flood.” Simon nodded. “Yes, but their seed rose again to occupy the land of Canaan that was promised as Israel’s inheritance by Yahweh. Joshua used the holy wars of Yahweh to cleanse the land from the evil filth of the Nephilim, whose descendants were the mighty Anakim and Rephaim. It was not until King David that they were fully subdued and wiped out.” Peter asked Jesus directly, “Well, then what do you mean that the Nephilim are back, Rabbi?” Jesus sighed. “The god of this world, and his principalities and powers know that I am here. So they have awakened the spirits of the Nephilim to occupy the Land. The holy wars of Yahweh are renewed in the heavenlies.” Simon added for clarification, “Rabbi is cleansing the land for inheritance by Messiah.” “In the synagogue,” said Jesus, “I did not quote the entire passage from Isaiah. I left out the last line.” “What was the line, Rabbi?” asked Peter. Jesus said somberly, “To proclaim the day of vengeance of our God.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #8))
“
Like just about everything else conjured up in the past century, the underground subway system of the modern city is an unfathomable engineering miracle covered in several inches of filth, urine, and spray paint. Despite being a certified member of the human race, I'll never fully understand why miracles of this magnitude are treated so casually.
”
”
Gene Doucette (Immortal)
“
Before she could rethink her actions, she slugged Mara as hard as she could in her perfect face. And even that was a light punishment for everything she’d done to Syn. Mara fell to the ground, sobbing. But she took no pity on her. “Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I’m not. I’m not only ashamed to call you human, I’m completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you’re the one who doesn’t deserve to breathe our air. Decent’s got nothing to do with birthright. It’s all about actions, and trust me, you’re the lowest form I’ve ever met and I’ve taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I’d rather sit at the table with them than you any day.” She
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Fire (The League, #2))
“
You're supposed to be made in His image, and yet you're all such ungrateful pieces of filth. You only bow your heads when you want something.
”
”
Ron Marz (Witchblade Volume 8)
“
The spelunkers of speculative fiction mining phosphorescent filth from the bowels of the city of New Sodom, the Sci-Fi freaks scraping kipple and back from the bins of decades-old shit sandwiches out back, composting it to grow shrooms, we have built this thing to take its place.
This is the legacy of generations of writers who’d rather tackle adult themes than pander to puerile power-fantasies, whose interests lay with the soft sciences and humanities as much as with the hard sciences and technology, for whom the fiction was always more important than either the fantasia or the futurology. It is also the legacy of those who simply don’t give a fuck about anything other than either fantasia or futurology. This is fiction in which the envelope has been pushed so far out, from ambition or expedience, that all descriptions and definitions – SCIENCE FICTION, SCIENCE FANTASY, SCI-FI, even speculative fiction – can only be, at best, nominal labels for it. It is the fiction that abandons those labels for a negation of description, an indefinition – the acronym SF, which might mean any or all of those things.
”
”
Hal Duncan (Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions)
“
trade in which these vessels were engaged; even when empty the stink of a slaver ship is unmistakable. Used only once for the transportation of three hundred human souls, left to rot and die in their own filth and misery, you could scrub her boards from head to toe in lye and she would still give herself away with her cloying smell. But instead of arresting her on this evidence, we had to overtake them at the exact moment that their holds were full of captured humanity, bound for a life of servitude and misery. Once the crafts had reached the open sea we stood little chance, as their superior speed and manoeuvrability would easily outpace us. Our only opportunity lay in a stealth attack from the coast.
”
”
Mike Rogers (Capture of a Slaver)
“
You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. 20 Human anger* does not produce the righteousness* God desires. 21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. 22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.
”
”
Anonymous (Holy Bible Text Edition NLT: New Living Translation)