Filth

“ I cleanse the human race of its filth. My hand cannot be as white as a lily. They send for me to wipe away all their dirt, all that is vile and disgusting. A terrible fate! But someone, if it be only one in a hundred thousand, must submit to it. ”

“ Through devious ways we follow the leader, and come at last to a cavernous retreat. The odors that salute us are offensive; on every hand there is an accumulation of filth that should naturally, if it does not, breed fever and death. ”

“ As the years go by, filth heaps itself around you like a mountain: there's no getting through it. Politics, people, servants, bedclothes, everything you eat, everything you touch, everything you do, say, think or feel: it's a beastly business, just one sickening mass of filth. . . . The only pure, unsullied thing that I have found in the world is music. Ah, what a pure thing music is! . . ."
"Paul, I must just go down to the store-room and have a talk with my cook about the filth which I'm to give you this evening," said Constance ”

“ Let's face it, I love slime!
All books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd. ”

“ Want, filth, and the infected atmosphere of their dens, had impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the semblance of humanity. ”

“ But if people seem to prefer being filthy to being clean, when the desirable condition calls for but little effort, it is obvious that in normal times, they were inherently filthy. And I experienced filth, day after day, in trains, railway restaurants and hotels, which I cannot hint at, much less describe. ”

“ We carry a dunghill continually within us. Alas! how silly a piece is the greatest, the strongest, and the comeliest of you all! What is that flesh which you so much pamper, but a skin full of corruption? a bag of filth, of phlegm, or choler, or such like excrements? If the curiousest dames had but a sight of the phlegm in their heads and bowels, the choler about their liver and galls, the worms or filth in other parts, they would go near to vomit at such a sight: the swine or beast hath as clean an inside. ”

“ Why are we forbidden to touch a corpse, and why for the purification of our souls is this endless washing of the body ordained? To me it seems that things in themselves are neither clean nor unclean: I can conceive of no inherent quality which makes them the one or the other. The filthiness of filth consists in its offending our sight or some other sense ”

“ Often hardly human in appearance, they had neither human tastes nor sympathies, nor even human sensations, for they revelled in the filth which is grateful to dogs, and other lower animals, and which to our apprehension is redolent only of nausea and abomination. ”

“ Hence the Mysteries with good reason adumbrate the immersion of the unpurified in filth, even in the Nether-World, since the unclean loves filth for its very filthiness, and swine foul of body find their joy in foulness. ”

“ Many houses stink so bad, that a clean man could not live in them, nor hardly breathe in them. Some men were raised in stink, and so were their fathers before them. I would not, attempt to bless any body in such places. You may inquire why I talk so. Can you talk in a better style about dirt, nastiness, and filth? If you can, I cannot, and at the same time make people feel enough upon the subject to put away their filth and be clean. ”

“ Accordingly in the brothels that are in hell foulnesses of every kind appear; and when light from heaven is admitted into them, adulteresses with adulterers are seen like swine, lying in very filth, and what is marvellous, like swine they are in their delight when in the midst of filth. ”

“ But if he have filth poured all over him, or poured into his mouth, or crammed into him, or if he be carnally used like a woman; then almost all men regard him with a feeling of horror, and they call him defiled and unclean. ”

“ They have several cures for this strange attack; but the never-failing one is a mixture of some obscene filth, which is concealed in some part of the house, whereupon the woman is said to go directly, on all fours, to where it is and swallow it. ”

“ Filth and vermine though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness. ”

“ Males or females that are unclean through running issue, and a woman after childbirth, must in addition bring a sacrifice, because their uncleanness occurs less frequently than that of women in their separation. All these cases of uncleanliness, viz., running issue of males or females, menstruations, leprosy, dead bodies of human beings, carcases of beasts and creeping things, and issue of semen, are sources of dirt and filth. ”

“ I can see very well that a great deal here is revolting and oppressive and painful to your own self. For example, this fool quarrel with Boris or this flunky who beats a woman, and—, in general, the constant contemplation of every kind of filth, lust, bestiality, vulgarity, drunkenness. ”

“ He who is not thoroughly clean in his person, will be offensive to all with whom he converses. A particular regard to the cleanliness of your [Pg 76] mouth, teeth, hands, and nails, is but common decency.
A foul mouth and unclean hands, are certain marks of vulgarity; the first is the cause of an offensive breath, which nobody can endure, and the last is declarative of dirty work, and disgraceful negligence to remove the filth. One may always know a gentleman by the state of his hands and nails. ”

“ I pass over many things, but I insist upon cleanliness." Does she take me for a farm girl, a peasant, a country servant? Cleanliness? Oh! I know that chestnut. They all say that. And often, when one goes to the bottom of things, when one turns up their skirts and examines their linen, how filthy they are! Sometimes it is disgusting enough to turn one's stomach. ”

“ A filthy woman, reeling drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. ”

“ But there is still by far too much carelessness in this matter, and some people seem to love to live amidst; filth, and to snuff its nauseous and unhealthy odors, when it would be far better to apply it to enriching your soil. ”

“ For we see that even nurses themselves, when they think to wipe away the filth of their little infants, and to make them clean; if they rub anything hard, otherwhiles fetch off the skin withal, make the flesh raw and put them to pain. ”

“ Let us keep our shame, and be made clean from the filth!" ”

“ In his dreams and phantasies he shows the terrible blood lust, the imperativeness of wishes, the brutal egoism of the periods of long past. Even man’s primordial toleration of filth is not absent; this subject’s history discloses urolagnistic and coprophagic tendencies. ”

“ Is the exhalation of an offensive odor the necessary property of a people imbruted by poverty and filth? In America that unpleasant effluvium has generally been considered a peculiarity pertaining to the colored race. ”

“ They are forced by necessity to herd with loathsome wretches to procure a little morbid warmth, tainted perhaps with noxious effluvia, on a miserable uncovered pallet, where they lie crowded together, ghastly with hunger, stupified with poisonous spirits, rotting with loathsome disease, and nauseous with accumulated filth. ”

“ He attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. At the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. The unclean are therefore ill at ease in his presence; ”

“ There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; ”

“ Do you think I will suffer a man, who can be guilty of so dirty and so filthy a negligence, to approach and stifle me with his embraces. Lay him on the ground,’ she added, speaking to the women, ‘and bring me a whip.’—They immediately threw me down ”

“ For when we clean people out, as they come here from the theatres with their filthiness, thither they go again, and take in a larger stock of filthiness, as if they lived for the purpose of only giving us trouble, and then come back to us, laden with ordure, in their manners, in their movements, in their words, in their laughter, in their idleness. ”

“ Both males and females, as a class, are very dirty and filthy in both person and habits. They appear to have an antipathy to bathing, and to make matters worse, they have a habit of anointing their bodies with ghee (melted butter) ”

“ Hereby we are taught, as Christians, to watch against, and lay aside, not only those more gross and fleshly dispositions and affections which denominate a person filthy, but all the disorders of a corrupt heart, which would prejudice it against the word and ways of God. Observe, 1. Sin is a defiling thing; it is called filthiness itself. 2. There is abundance of that which is evil in us, to be watched against; there is superfluity of naughtiness. 3. It is not enough to restrain evil affections, but they must be cast from us, or laid apart. ”

“ The ladies of England designate smoking and snuffing, filthy and dirty habits. If you chance, dear reader, to ask why—because—because—they are vile and dirty habits, and thereby—‘hangs a tale.’ Then, as a matter of course, comes to be cited a list of the most gentlemanly men, young and old, who are never guilty of committing the sin. ”

“ Filthy lusts must be suppressed, in order to the supporting of holy love. Walk in love, and shun fornication and all uncleanness. Fornication is folly committed between unmarried persons. All uncleanness includes all other sorts of filthy lusts, which were too common among the Gentiles. ”

“ They defile the flesh. The flesh or body is the immediate seat, and often the irritating occasion, of many horrid pollutions; yet these, though done in and against the body, do greatly defile and grievously maim and wound the soul. Fleshly lusts do war against the soul, 1 Pet. ii. 11; and in 2 Cor. vii. 1 we read of filthiness of flesh and spirit, each of which, though of different kinds, defiles the whole man.
2. They despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities, are of a disturbed mind and a seditious spirit, forgetting that the powers that be are ordained of God, Rom. ”

“ But these women delight in intercourse with the effeminate. And crowds of abominable creatures (κιναίδες) flow in, of unbridled tongue, filthy in body, filthy in language; men enough for lewd offices, ministers of adultery, giggling and whispering, and shamelessly making through their noses sounds of lewdness and fornication to provoke lust, endeavouring to please by lewd words and attitudes, inciting to laughter, the precursor of fornication. ”

“ In all modes of travelling, the American customs, with reference to the means of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and filthy; and I strongly incline to the belief that a considerable amount of illness is referable to this cause. ”

“ She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.
"You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. ”

“ An odor of pickle, of rotting vegetables, of red herring, persists around us, impregnating our garments. It is intolerable. Then each of these creatures, heaped up on their chairs like bundles of dirty linen, plunges into the narration of some dirty action, some scandal, some crime. Coward that I am, I try to smile with them, to applaud with them; but I feel something insurmountable, something like frightful disgust. A nausea turns my stomach, forces its way to my throat, leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and presses my temples. ”

“ A disgust, bitter as a nausea, an almost savage hate, arose from his heart at the thought that the following night he would again have that woman near him on the same pillow, that he would again hear the breathing of the sleeping woman, that he would again smell the odor and feel the contact of that heated skin, and then that the day would break again and pass by in the usual idleness, amidst the torture of perpetual alternatives. ”

“ Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; Filths savour but themselves. ”

“ They appear to possess the power of vomiting at pleasure, and use it to disgust people into a compliance with their demands. Sometimes they lie in the street, covering the entire face with dust, keeping, it is said, their eyes open the while, and breathing through the dust. ”

“ I will bite you, I will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every appearance of great pleasure. If a child commits some slight fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the blood flows. At such moments the face of even a beautiful woman is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and convulsive tremors. ”

“ Upon the floor, crumbs thickly lie,
As though for chickens laid,
Around his mouth and nose, oh fie!
Is dirt of every shade.
He looks, bedaubed with smear and stain,
Just like some savage wild,
His hands as forks are used, it's plain.
For shame! You dirty child!
Selfishness
Look at the selfish man! ”