the filth QUOTES

1 " Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other. Such imaginings wash away the filth of life on the ground. "

― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

2 " Death had to take her little by little, bit by bit, dragging her along to the bitter end of the miserable existence she'd made for herself. They never even knew what she did die of. Some spoke of a chill. But the truth was that she died from poverty, from the filth and the weariness of her wretched life. "

― Émile Zola , L'Assommoir

3 " The world brazenly touts freedom as both the inalienable right and morally liberating justification to mindlessly play in the filth that lies all around me. And the slight bit of sanity that yet remains within me asks, ‘what raging madness would prompt me to incessantly wallow in the very things that will eventually swallow me? "

― Craig D. Lounsbrough , An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus

4 " I am not a good enough writer to convey the intense emotion I felt over my newfound self-respect. It was a rehabilitation, if not a new life. This imaginary baptism, the immersion in purity, the elevation of my being above the filth in which I'd been mired and, overnight, this sense of responsibility, made me into a different man. The convict's complexes that make him hear his chains and suspect he's being watched even after he's freed, everything I'd seen, gone through, suffered, everything that was making me tarnished, rotten and dangerous, passively obedient on the surface but terribly dangerous in rebellion, all that had disappeared as if by a miracle. "

― Henri Charrière , Papillon

5 " One problem with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection, and therefore of responsibility, between our everyday acts and their real-world consequences. Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the back-breaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon. Specialization neatly hides our implication in all that is done on our behalf by unknown other specialists half a world away. "

― Michael Pollan , Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

6 " Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories. "

― Melina Marchetta , Quintana of Charyn (Lumatere Chronicles, #3)

7 " Sigmund Freud once asserted, " Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge." Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the " individual differences" did not " blur" but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints. "

8 " At the entrance of the Führerbunker, a dandelion pushed through the crack between cobblestones. The cadet did not notice that he stepped on it as they entered the bunker.

A dark cloud of smoke rose from a burning ministry. Zeller fantasized that the filth that surrounded him was cleansed. He saw himself, a portly and tailored leader in a white uniform with gold epaulets, buttons, and stripes.

He imagined himself in an immaculate, white city in Antarctica. "

― Paul Majkut , Stench of the Word

9 " At times it is so enjoyable to mire your neighbor into the filth you already got stuck in long ago! "

― Igor Eliseev

10 " Your blanks have been filled in far differently from those of a child grown up in the filth and poverty "

― John Howard Griffin , Black Like Me

11 " ...we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions on front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night...and what your dreams are like. "

― Stephen King , Different Seasons

12 " The sound of running footsteps made them all start. Then the refectory door opened and the round, freckled face of Sister Belinda appeared. She was breathing heavily, and her veil was crooked, showing short tufts of red hair sprouting around her glowing face like unruly weeds in a parched garden.
“Excuse me, Mother, Sisters,” she said. “But there is a police car waiting at the gate and what looks like the Black Maria behind it. Also, another car approaching from the farm and a uniformed constable coming in via the beach path. It would appear that the filth have us surrounded. "

― Sharon J. Bolton , Dead Woman Walking

13 " Korea is often called the “Land of the Morning Calm.” It’s a country where you notice the filth and the smog on your first trip and you can’t imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea to visit. Then you meet the people and you walk among their culture and you get a sense there is something deeper beneath the surface, and before you know it, the smog doesn’t matter and the filth is gone—and in its place there is incredible beauty. The sun rises first over Japan, and as Korea is waiting for the earth to spin, for streaks of light to brighten its eastern sky, in that quiet moment there is a calmness that makes Korea the most beautiful country in the world. "

― Tucker Elliot , The Day Before 9/11

14 " 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