Loathing

“ I was surprised at the agonies the young men underwent in learning the loathsome habit, such nausea and pallor and misery overspread their whole frame; and it was only by the loss of all delicacy of smell and taste that they at last mastered the loathing and qualms; no refined senses could live within reach of the smoke. ”

“ We may notice how the thought of an end makes possible the artificial creation of appetite as a means to sensuous satisfaction, and further that here again is the origin of loathing. The perpetual unsatisfied want and disappointment, with their pain, are themselves transferred to and objectified in the idea of that which is lusted after, and now is both longed for and hated.
So far we have seen the nature of lust as compared with appetite; but the ideal voluptuary is not merely the man who lusts and is not satisfied. He reaches a level which, intellectually considered, is still higher. ”

“ It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone. ”

“ It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. ”

“ And with true psychology he adds that his greatest danger—he means to his spiritual health and balance—is loathing of mankind.
The loathing of mankind is doubtless the best modern expression for what the ancients called misanthropy. ”

“ But the loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed in subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares. ”

“ Violent hunger, for example, though upon many occasions not only natural, but unavoidable, is always indecent, and to eat voraciously is universally regarded as a piece of ill manners. There is, however, some degree of sympathy, even with hunger. It is agreeable to see our companions eat with a good appetite, and all expressions of loathing are offensive. ”

“ Then they caused satiety to the verge of loathing.' Only necessary things, such as bread and water, he says, possess real value; but he desires neither, because he has even less taste for them than for the dainties which spoil a man's morrow. ”

“ Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its opposite. ”

“ 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. I should like to go away. ”

“ The stronger meaning came from the fact that the word was often used to describe the dislike a sick person feels for food. Every one knows how strong this feeling can be, and it is from this that loathe and loathsome took the strong meaning they now have. Curiously enough, the adjective loath or loth, from the same word, has kept the old mild meaning. When we say we are "loth" to do a thing, we do not mean that we hate doing it, but merely that we feel rather unwilling to do it. In Old English, too, the word filth and its derivative foul were not quite such strong words as dirt and dirty. ”

“ But more than by anything else, he was disgusted by himself, by his perfumed hair, by the smell of wine from his mouth, by the flabby tiredness and listlessness of his skin. Like when someone, who has eaten and drunk far too much, vomits it back up again with agonising pain and is nevertheless glad about the relief, thus this sleepless man wished to free himself of these pleasures, these habits and all of this pointless life and himself, in an immense burst of disgust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poor cheap human nature! Twelve years I’ve roughed it in shacks and junks, a flannel shirt to my back, and pork and beans or rice and fish in my stomach; while he has sat beneath the oaks we played under in our childhood, and has slept in the panelled rooms of our home, and has held the woman he stole from me in his arms! Talk of family affection! ”

“ Every sense was outraged by the accumulation of horrors that combined to disgust and horrify. Hunger, nakedness, thirst, heat, damp, and cold, all combined to swell the catalogue of their miseries and their woes. ”

“ No horror of the Middle Ages wrung the modern conscience with a sense of disgust more acute than was felt in remembering the treatment of the insane even within recent times. Shut in attics or cellars, or in cages outside a house, without warmth, light, or care, they lived in filth, with nourishment such as was thrown to dogs. ”

“ Under fear are comprehended sloth, shame, terror, cowardice, fainting, confusion, astonishment.—In pleasure they comprehend malevolence, that is pleased at another's misfortune, delight, boastfulness, and the like. To lust they associate anger, fury, hatred, enmity, discord, wants, desire, and other feelings of that kind. ”

“ It seems to me sometimes as if 'gluttony, envy, and sloth' were the very foundation on which the lives of some of these people rest, and as for pride and anger and lust, why, we take them for granted! ”

“ A psalm for the glutton and the drunkard.
1 Vain man, on foolish pleasures bent,
Prepares for his own punishment;
What pains, what loathsome maladies
From luxury and lust arise!
2 The drunkard feels his vitals waste,
Yet drowns his health to please his taste;
Till all his active powers are lost,
And fainting life draws near the dust.
3 The glutton groans and loathes to eat,
His soul abhors delicious meat;
Nature, with heavy loads opprest,
Would yield to death to be releas'd.
4 Then how the frighted sinners fly
To God for help with earnest cry! ”

“ We have been slaked for so long with bitterness, gall, and hatred, that now, when we are offered bread and salt, we feel sure it must be poisoned—even though the hand that holds it out to us shakes with pity ”

“ Worldly lusts - Such desires, affections, and appetites, as men are governed by who have their portion in this life, and live without God in the world. Gluttony, drunkenness, lasciviousness, anger, malice, and revenge ”

“ If all men are drunk, why not drink with them, and teach them to avoid excess? Of what avail are these subtle thoughts, these lofty schemes, which end only in disgrace?”
“I have heard,” rejoined Ch'ü-p'ing, “that the bather fresh from the bath will shake the dust from his hat and clothes. How should he allow his pure body to be soiled with the corruption of earth? I am willing to find a grave in the bellies of the fishes that swim in this stream: I will not let my purity be defiled by the filth and corruption of the world.” ”

“ Both love and hunger are desires to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired object) ; disgust is the fear of doing so. Love is accompanied with a counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. But this very feeling, [Pg 84] shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in connection with eating. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While he who has indulged in licentious practices may again find himself disposed to give way to the seductive influence of the siren. So with drunkenness, malice, envy, covetousness, hatred, anger, and, in short, all the evil dispositions that flesh is heir to. ”

“ It is a sense of disgust such as comes to the early-rising guest who goes into a drawing-room in the morning and finds last night's coffee-cups and decanters and cigarette ends looking dreadful in the sunlight. ”

“ The term ‘disgust,’ in its simplest sense, means something offensive to the taste. It is curious how readily this feeling is excited by anything unusual in the appearance, odour, or nature of our food. ”

“ When a person eats or drinks before getting hungry, when he dresses not to protect his body from cold, when he builds a house not to shelter himself from weather but to increase the pleasures of satisfying his needs, he commits the innate sin of lust.
4. When a person was born and raised in the habits of excesses in drink, food, clothing, housing, and continues to exploit this superfluity in his life while maintaining these habits, then such a person commits the inherited sin of lust. ”

“ We both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place ... Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things. ”

“ Nothing renders one so unpleasant to one's acquaintance, or is such a source of misery to one's self. The evil may be from some derangement of the stomach or some defective condition of the teeth, or catarrhal affection of the throat and nose. ”

“ But the hiccuping of those who are loaded with wine, and the snortings of those who are stuffed with food, and the snoring rolled in the bed-clothes, and the rumblings of pained stomachs, cover over the clear-seeing eye of the soul, by filling the mind with ten thousand phantasies. And the cause is too much food, which drags the rational part of man down to a condition of stupidity. ”

“ It is a spectacle that ought to make the imps of netherdom tremble for their laurels—man, the remorseless glutton, going about with a tongue and a knife, with his tongue preaching peace, mercy, and love, and with his knife making the very earth sodden with blood. ”

“ The most silly repulse, the most trifling ruffle of temper, or derangement of stomach, anything seems to justify an appeal to the razor or the cord. I have a contempt for persons who destroy themselves. ”

“ Some came out sick and faint; some with faces deadly pale and burning eyes and tight-shut lips; and some blaspheming aloud and hurling curses on the monsters whose pleasure and delight it was to work such abhorred wrong on poor human flesh. ”

“ To lie is a voluntary sin of the man, and the tongue partaketh of the guilt. The will might have kept out that sin, which caused a disorder in the appetite. If a drunkard or a glutton provoke a venereous, inordinate appetite in himself, that lust is his sin, because it is voluntarily provoked. 4. Yet such additions of inordinacy, as men stir up in any appetite, by their own actual sins and customs, are more aggravated and dangerous to the soul, than that measure of distemper which is merely the fruit of original sin. ”

“ Why, what worth calling a reason could make any mortal hang over this trash?—idiotic immorality dressed up to look fine, with a little bit of doctrine tacked to it, like a hare's foot on a dish, to make believe the mess is not cat's flesh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I thought how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium. ”

“ Then for divine words he uttered shameless wickedness, for awful doctrines wanton lewdness, for piety impiety, for continence fornication, adultery, foul lust, theft; teaching that gluttony and drunkenness as well as all the rest were good for man’s life. ”

“ There shall the slothful be pricked forward with burning goads, and the gluttons be tormented with intolerable hunger and thirst. There shall the luxurious and the lovers of pleasure be plunged into burning pitch and stinking brimstone, and the envious shall howl like mad dogs for very grief. ”

“ Never say peepers for eyes, potato-trap for mouth, nor bread-basket for stomach, at least not in the very highest circles. Olfactor, optics and paunch are a choice disguise for the Queen’s English, if that is the end in view.
Never say that a man was “howling mad” or “jumping crazy,” meaning that he was very angry, when you have such tempting morsels as “hopping mad,” 67 “frothing at the mouth,” “mad as a hatter,” and “crazy as a bedbug” at your disposal. ”

“ Now whenever nature is the cause of these habits, nobody would call people who give way to them incontinent, any more than we should call women incontinent for being not males, but females.—For all excess whether of folly, cowardice, incontinence, or savagery is either brutal or morbid.—ch. 8., for he is necessarily incapable of repentance and is therefore incurable, as to be incapable of repentance is to be incurable:—If a person gives in where people generally resist and are capable of resisting, he deserves to be called effeminate and luxurious; for luxury is a form of effeminacy. ”