"Filth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cultivation. There are, of course, black spots in the towns; but they are as nothing to the traveller who has perambulated the native quarters of any British Colony in the Far East. When we think of the millions of dollars Hongkong has expended to cope with filth-created plagues and to reduce the native rookeries of China town, it fills us with the highest admiration for Dutch administration in Java. The Government of the Straits Settlements is entering upon a similar campaign to rectify past sins against the laws of sanitation and hygiene, and hundreds ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... her nest, and resists the robber who comes for her eggs, and he must take care not to get bitten. The murre remains until her enemy is close upon her; then she rises with a scream which often startles a thousand or two of birds, who whirl up into the air in a dense mass, scattering filth and guano over ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... book. He discovered that, in Philadelphia, living was very dear, comfort very uncommon, and good manners still more rare. Throughout his journey he found in the taverns "a system of impertinence, rudeness, rascality, and filth, rendered more intolerable by an antipathy to the English, in the brutal manifestation of which most of the Colonel, Doctor, and Squire, keepers of the taverns, were pleased to indulge." When he asked an hostler to call him early in the morning, he was answered that—he might call himself ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... butter, coffee, and personal dirt? You cannot. But you are entitled to wonder why the Municipal Sanitary Inspector does not inspect it and order it to be destroyed.... That youthful miss in torpidity over that palimpsest of filth is what the Free Library has to show as the justification of its existence. I know what ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... low Irishman or woman, I think you will allow that the same causes produce very nearly the same effects. The stench in an Irish, Scotch, Italian, or French hovel are quite as intolerable as any I ever found in our negro houses, and the filth and vermin which abound about the clothes and persons of the lower peasantry of any of those countries as abominable as the same conditions in the black population of the United States. A total absence of self-respect begets these hateful ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end of that man is worse than the beginning." [Some professors, take them at the best, they are but like dogs, spewing out their filth for a time.] Now that they are reprobates, dogs, or sows, read further; "But," saith he, "it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... did more fully and graciously discover Himself unto me, and indeed, did quite, not only deliver me from the guilt that, by these things was laid upon my conscience, but also from the very filth thereof; for the temptation was removed, and I was put into my right mind again, as ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... when he pleased to recreat himselfe, would sit doune and sett his charmes a work, he made severalls, both men and women, go mother naked thorow the toune, some chanting and singing, others at every gutter they came to taking up the goupings[121] of filth and besmeiring themselfes wt it. He hath made some also leip on horseback wt their face to the horse taill, and take it in their teeth, and in this posture ride ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... left the town the misery of the place smote him in the eyes. Filth, refuse, debris filled the streets. Sick and dying men called to him from dark doorways, children and women begged for bread, carcasses lay unburied, vultures hovering above them—his tireless efforts had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thing to rest upon, but to endure torment in; they draw a rag over them at night, and so sleep; there they throw down their bodies, and the bodies of children that thou hast given them. For the misery that they grow up in, for the filth of their food, for the lack of covering, their faces are yellow, and all their bodies of the color of earth. They tremble with cold, and for leaness they stagger in walking. They go weeping and sighing, and full of sadness, and all misfortunes ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Blood-month. The Venerable Bede, {156} tells us that, at the request of Pope Boniface, A.D. 611, the Emperor Phocas ordered, according to a general practice, that, on the site, in Rome, where “all the gods” had been worshipped, which was called the Pantheon, the filth of idolatry being abolished, a church should be erected in memory of the Blessed Virgin and all Martyrs; and on this principle, in other places also, the site of the heathen worship, and the day of its special observance, were transformed into the occasion and place of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... The patriarch then conducted him to the Church of Sion. 'Here,' said he, 'is the temple of David.' 'It is a lie,' rejoined Omar, and went his way, directing his steps towards the gate named Bab-Mohammed. The spot on which now stands the Mosque of Omar was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to the street were covered with it, and that the rubbish reached almost to the top of the vault. 'You can only get in here by crawling,' said the patriarch. 'Be it so,' answered Omar. The patriarch ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in the big trap which was covered over artfully with earth and baited with some stuff which stank horribly. I remember it looked very like my own hind-legs. The fox, not being able to find me, went to this filth ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Henley's poems. When the flood subsided all the books were gone, but the next day as he was looking over the wreckage of neighbouring houses he found his Henley washed up on a doorstep—covered with slime and filth but still intact. He sent it to Brentano's in New York to be rebound in vellum, instructing them not to clean it in any way. He wrote to Henley about the incident, who sent him a very friendly autographed card which he pasted in the volume. That was one ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... filth, and monstrous blasphemies, Sweat, writhings, anguish, laboring of lungs, In that close mist, and cryings for the light, Moans of the dying ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... ancestors have told stories of war, love, mysteries, and the miraculous performances of lower animals and inanimate objects. The ultimate source of all stories lies in a thorough democracy, unhampered by the restrictions of a higher civilization. Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes. The remarkable and gratifying truth is, however, that the short-story, beginning in the crude and brutal stages of man's development, has gradually unfolded to greater and more useful possibilities, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... wharf; and when I do push off, I have—I, Her Majesty's representative, in the sight of these Chinese scoundrels—I have, I say, to suffer from the insult and contumely of being pelted, stoned, of having filth thrown at me. Look at my nearly new uniform coat, sir. Do you see this spot on the sleeve? A mark that will never come out. That was a blow, sir, made by a disgusting rotten fish's head, sir. Loathsome—loathsome! While the insult to Her Majesty's flag called ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... Jewish quarter of the city (/Judenstadt/), properly called the Jew Street (/Judengasse/); as it consisted of little more than a single street, which in early times may have been hemmed in between the walls and trenches of the town, as in a prison (/Zwinger/). The closeness, the filth, the crowd, the accent of an unpleasant language, altogether made a most disagreeable impression, even if one only looked in as one passed the gate. It was long before I ventured in alone; and I did not return there readily, when ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a' about it, when I never see'd one-tenth of it. It's as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made up o' grand palaces, and three-sixths o' middling kind, and th' rest o' holes o' iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on, I'm glad ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... present time like a ready-made coat. The South is the Prodigal Son. We went out from our father's house on a expedition wich heznt proved altogether a success. We spent our share uv the estate, and a little more. We run through with our means, and hev cum down to rags, and dirt, and filth, and hunger. We are, and hev bin some time, a chawin husks. We run out after them twin harlots, Slavery and State Rights, and they've cleaned us out. Our pockets are empty. No more doth the pleasant half-dollar ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... that every Chinaman liable to zymotic diseases died thousands of years ago, and that by the law of the survival of the fittest all Chinamen born now are immune from filth diseases; that they can drink sewage-water with impunity, and thrive under conditions which would kill any ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... in the slush and filth of this world. Happy is he who picks them up and helps to wash the dirt away, that they may shine for God. I am very much drawn to my fallen sisters. Oh! the cruelty and oppression they meet with! If the first stone was cast by those who were ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... paralysed from exposure. So filthy and verminous was he, that it was necessary to scrape his body, which mere washing would not touch. When he was picked up, a crowd of several hundred people followed him down the street, attracted by his dreadful appearance. His pockets were full of filth, amongst which were found 5s. in coppers. He had then been a month in the Shelter, where he peels or peeled potatoes, etc., and ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... for reciprocated strength; they were thus taught the inevitable result of the indulgence of the vice. The missionaries of temperance went through the country contrasting the wretchedness and the degradation and the filth of drunkenness with the domestic comfort, and the health, and the regular employment of those who were masters of themselves. So far as men believed this, and gave up the tyranny of the present for the hope of the future—so far they lived ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... poison a day, at fivepence the pot, amounts to seven pounds and two shillings in the year! Man and wife suck down, in this way, fourteen pounds four shillings a year! Is it any wonder that they are clad in rags, that they are skin and bone, and that their children are covered with filth? ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... means animal fat melted and clarified, that is, cleansed or purified from filth. Tallow is procured from many animals, but the most esteemed, and the most used, is that made from oxen, sheep, swine, goats, deer, bears, &c.; some of which tallows or fats are used in medicine, some in making soap, and dressing leather; others in the manufacture of candles, &c. For the last-mentioned ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... Pietro Damiano, that the poet, though among them, could not hear what they said—and the blushing eclipse, like red clouds at sunset, which takes place at the apostle Peter's denunciation of the sanguinary filth of the court of Rome—all these sublimities, and many more, make us not know whether to be more astonished at the greatness of the poet or the raging littleness of the man. Grievous is it to be forced to bring two such opposites together; and I wish, for the honour and glory of poetry, I ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... disturbed by strange shrieks, and he saw a woman, stark naked, walking on all fours, with a peacock's feather for a tail. As she came nearer, she barked, sniffed, and licked the ground. Her fair head was covered with mud, and her whole body was a mass of filth. In this unhappy creature the holy Bishop Nicolas recognized ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... shepherdess, or a brigandess, cannot be said to be prepossessing. In fact, it was not my luck to see a single good-looking woman in the country, although I naturally saw women who were less ugly than others. Anyhow, with the accumulated filth that from birth is undisturbed by soap, scrubbing or bathing; with nose, cheeks and forehead smeared with black ointment to prevent the skin cracking in the wind; and with the unpleasant odour that emanates from never-changed clothes, the Tibetan woman is, at her best, repulsive to European ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not stop here. Within was still another room, for smokers, anything but like the fashionable place we had seen uptown. It was low, common, disgusting. The odour everywhere was offensive; everywhere was filth that should naturally breed disease. It was an inferno reeking with unwholesome sweat and still obscured with dense fumes ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Filth, poorness of living, and the want of linen, made this horrible disease formerly very common in Scotland. Robert Bruce died of the leprosy; and, through all Scotland, there were hospitals erected for the reception of lepers, to prevent ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... something to absorb the spittle of their irritability. A hand to arrange the pages of their private diary when they get stuck together with filth; and above all a presence between them and the mirror during those grey dawn hours when passing it, they are likely to see themselves as they are. Ah, then one must be armed with the eloquence of Cato to reassure ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... Alexandria! beloved by the kings! It is of no use. No man who has seen the Alexandria of the present day can keep a seat on a high horse when he speaks of that most detestable of cities. How may it fitly be described? May we not say that it has all the filth of the East, without any of that picturesque beauty with which the East abounds; and that it has also the eternal, grasping, solemn love of lucre which pervades our western marts, but wholly unredeemed by the society, the science, and civilization ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... so free and independent and prosperous a nation, that the notion of any fundamental change in the Constitution is awful. Yet when we boast of our freedom and prosperity we should not forget the enormous mass of misery, vice, filth, and all evil which disgraces all our large towns—nor the brutish ignorance and apathy which pervades much of our rural population. And it is well worth the most earnest thought and study, on the part of all Englishmen ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... row of soldiers, machine-made men. See the trumpets, I can almost hear their blast, and see the dust and life-blood of degrading, cruel wars, which impoverish and grind into filth the entire afflicted human race, though there are very excellent people of wealth, were there to wisely co-operate. There is some promise in this reading. If rich men could become active benefactors—see the little banners—wars would at once end, and the Christ ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... it done," Eumolpus broke in, "and I didn't order it as an unlucky omen, either, seeing that I had to be aboard the same vessel: I did it because the scoundrels had long matted hair, I ordered the filth cleared off the wretches because I did not wish to even seem to make a prison out of your ship: besides, I did not want the seared scars of the letters to be hidden in the least, by the interference of the hair; as they ought to be in plain sight, for everyone ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... difficult to define the colour of their skins, so carefully is it disguised under a thick coating of grease, and the black and red substances which they rub in. Their hair is coarse, thick, and bushy, covered with ochre, down, and all the filth accumulated by time and neglect, and adds not a little ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... less trim. So we would stroll towards Hampstead or Highgate, the only drawback to these regions being the squalid, ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it was necessary to pass. The skirts of London when the air is filled with north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the least cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wandering masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves. At the corner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to be devoured, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... condemn ourselves and reject our self-love. The others, because they love and esteem themselves, are despicable and unacceptable in the sight of God. Again, we are chosen of God for the reason that we despise ourselves as filth. Such God chooses, and has chosen from eternity. Because the would-be saints elect themselves, God will reject them, as indeed he has from eternity. Now, this is what Paul ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the sea-nymphs, generally tall stout fellows, pinion his arms to his sides; and another, bringing a bucket filled with grease and slops from the kitchen, sets it down at his godship's feet, putting a small painting-brush into his hand. Neptune now dips his brush into the filth, and proceeds to spread a lather over the face of the novice, taking care to ask questions during the whole process; and if the adopted be simple enough to reply, the brush is instantly thrust into his mouth. As soon as a sufficient quantity of ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... and ignorant what fate by fire or iron might be their portion ere the night was done. They saw the corn that was their winter store to save their offspring from famine poured out like ditch-water. They saw oats and wheat flung down to be trodden into a slough of mud and filth. They saw the walnut presses in their kitchens broken open, and their old heirlooms of silver, centuries old, borne away as booty. They saw the oak cupboards in their wives' bed-chambers ransacked, and the homespun linen and the quaint bits of plate that had formed ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... State university, or of the Normal School, or of Purdue University, school commissioners and county superintendents. But the legislature should give them the power to rescue our prisons, hospitals and asylums from the indescribable horror of filth, neglect and cruelty which hangs like a murky cloud over many of them. Men have tried it and failed. Stupidity or partisanship or brutality or avarice, has transformed many a noble foundation of benevolence into a hell of abomination. Some one must step in to inspect; to enforce order, cleanliness ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... I want to speak to you about," he began, as they sat in the old-fashioned parlour. "You know what the storm has done to the city water. It has washed all the summer's accumulation of filth down into the streams that feed the reservoir, and since the filtering plant is out of commission the water has been simply abominable. The people are complaining louder than ever. Blake and the rest of his crew are telling the public that this water is ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... was bound to respect. They were given food or drink only when benevolence might be roused; but the donor would never again touch the vessel in which the offering was made. The Eta,[54] though in individual cases becoming measurably rich, rotted and starved, and were made the filth, and off-scouring of the earth, because they were the butchers, the skinners, the leather workers, and thus handled dead animals, being made also the executioners and buriers of the dead. After a quarter of a century the citizens, whose ancestry is not ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... mortified chastisements of their bodies, exceed all the boasted performances of heretics and idolaters in all ages and countries. With this miserable wretch, who was cloathed in rags, crowned with feathers, and covered, with filth, his majesty conversed for about an hour, with such kindness, as shewed a humility not common among kings. All this time the beggar sat before the king, which is not even permitted to his son. The beggar gave the king as a present, a cake made by himself of coarse ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... that either the "Miracle of St. Mark," or the great "Crucifixion" in the Scuola di San Rocco, cost Tintoret more pains than this comparatively small work, which is now utterly neglected, covered with filth and cobwebs, and fearfully injured. As a piece of color, and light and shade, it is altogether marvellous. Of all the fifty figures which the picture contains, there is not one which in any way injures or contends with another; nay, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... was able to secure in the upper districts of the Calabar. One form of it runs thus, and it is recited before swallowing the drink made of filth ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... slaughtered children, one great cry From either enemy! From either host, thigh-deep in filth and shame, One prayer, one and the same; Out of the obscene seas of slaughter, hear, From East and West, one prayer: 'O God, deliver Thy people. Let Thy sword Destroy ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... companionship. You well remember the solemn promise you made, but at each time you deferred its fulfillment, and now I must again hear your vain excuses. I have suffered much for your sake, and have now the enmity of many a former friend, and even my pilgrim robe is becoming stained with the filth of ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a nostril-snuffing putrescence, and a foot-spurning filth, in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled * * * * * * * * or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... gather that many people hold very loose and very nasty notions about some things; so I just wanted to see how you felt about such. If I had a sister now, and saw a man coming to woo her, all beclotted with puddle filth—or if I knew that he had just left some woman as good as she, crying eyes and heart out over his child—I don't know that I could keep my hands off him—at least if I feared she might take him. What do you think now? Mightn't it be a righteous thing to throttle ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... I not tell you one was obliged to stand up? I stood up all the first night. The floor was thirty centimetres deep in filth. The second night one had settled down ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... thread snapped. It was the beginning of a period of unrestrained misconduct. Intoxicated by the novelty of yielding to Satan, I gave him a free hand and the result was months of debauchery and self-disgust. The underworld women I met, the humdrum filth of their life, and their matter-of-fact, business-like attitude toward it never ceased to shock and repel me. I never left a creature of this kind without abominating her and myself, yet I would soon, sometimes during the very same evening, call on her ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... with two or three companies' buildings—of these was the town composed. Many were rushing for the steamers in waiting, determined only upon one thing—to get home to the States. Some carried heavy sacks of gold, others went empty-handed. There was the summer's accumulation of filth in the camp, too young as yet for cleanly conditions, and these brought their sure accompaniment—the fever. Many suffered for weeks ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... distant and unoffending one; it was a moral wrong. He was much struck at a remark which appeared in the Public journals in Melbourne. It seems to have been the custom of some persons to collect all the filth and rubbish from their persons and during the night to force it upon the premises of their neighbours. Now, these persons were designed miscreants, the paragraph commenced "the miscreants have been at work again." But he considered ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... splendidly. The people took to them very kindly, and the men themselves looked so clean and happy that it was difficult to realize that they were the same unkempt, dirty individuals who had been seen not so long before wading through the mud and filth ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... was close to the front door, and his acute attention was suddenly directed to a violent shaking and scratching, accompanied by a prolonged whine. In an instant he ran into the hall, and unlocked the entrance door.... A mass of filth and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... scornful kindness as you might accord your lapdog. I have but dared to peep at heaven while I might, and only as lost Dives peeped. Ignoble as I am, I never dreamed to squire an angel down toward the mire and filth which ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... was in part darkness, full of a foul stale smell, and a cloud of nasty flies; it had been left, besides, in some disorder, or else the birds, during their time of tenancy, had knocked the things about; and the floor, like the deck before we washed it, was spread with pasty filth. Against the wall, in the far corner, I found a handsome chest of camphor-wood bound with brass, such as Chinamen and sailors love, and indeed all of mankind that plies in the Pacific. From its outside view I could thus make no deduction; and, strange to say, the interior was concealed. All the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last, when Christ sits on the throne of the universe to judge the world. For will He not say, as He said long years ago, 'I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat, naked and ye clothed me not, sick and in miserable dwellings reeking with filth and disease, and ye drew the hire of these places and visited me not?' For are these men and women and children not our brethren? Verily, God will require it at our hands, O men of Milton, if, having the power to use God's property so as to make the world happier and ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... isle! to thee alone belong Millions of wits, and brokers in old song: Thee well a land of liberty we name, Where all are free to scandal and to shame; Thy sons, by print, may set their hearts at ease, And be mankind's contempt, whene'er they please; Like trodden filth, their vile and abject sense Is unperceiv'd, but when it gives offence: Their heavy prose our injur'd reason tires; Their verse immoral kindles loose desires: Our age they puzzle, and corrupt our prime, Our sport ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... we ask this legislation? In 1860, according to the census, there were fourteen thousand three hundred and sixteen colored people in this District, and we ask this legislation for the male adults of that number. Are they in rags and filth and degradation? The tax-books of the District will tell you that they pay taxes on $1,250,000 worth of real estate, held within the limits of this District. On one block, on which they pay taxes on fifty odd thousand dollars, there are but two colored freeholders who have not ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Albert, however, gave the answer demanded by Luther, in a short letter of December 21. He assured him that the subject of his complaint had been removed; that as to himself, he did not deny that he was a miserable sinner, the very filth of the earth, as bad as anyone. Christian chastisement he could well endure; he looked to God for grace and strength, to live according to His will. So abjectly did this magnate quail before the Word, with which Luther threatened to expose his doings. He must no doubt ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the miserable village affords is what was formerly used by robbers as a prison-house for their victims, but which is now used as a kind of store-room. There is but one room, and its earthen floor is littered over with filth of almost every description, while dust and cob-webs everywhere abound. This is the RECEPTION-ROOM for our ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... our first strong impression of the native's life we overlook much—the filth, the sores, the brutality of social life; but these are really only ripples on an otherwise smooth existence, defects which are not less present in our civilization, but ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face—then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... informed himself of the condition of those who for unproved political offences were in thousands undergoing degrading and murderous penalties. He contrived to visit some of the Neapolitan prisons, another name for the extreme of filth and horror; he saw political prisoners (and political prisoners included a large percentage of the liberal opposition) chained two and two in double irons to common felons; he conversed with Poerio himself in the bagno of Nisida chained ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... mist of the ocean. They were every where encountered, and yet presented no resistance to be assailed. They were intimated in the Jacobin journals; they were suggested, with daily increasing distinctness, at the tribune. And in those multitudinous gatherings, where Marat stood in filth and rags to harangue the miserable, and the vicious, and the starving, they were proclaimed loudly, and with execrations. The Jacobins rejoiced that they had now, by the force of circumstances, crowded their adversaries into a position from ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... that free-love filth, to corrupt and demoralize our people, is being propagated by the Socialist Party of America through its National Headquarters in Chicago, Berger's publication company in Milwaukee, Hillquit's "New York Call," and other ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... come to pass, that he that is left in Zion shall be called holy: when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, by the spirit of judgment and the spirit ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... crime that to them has become a custom and religion—a people in whom murder is the finest art, and who from their earliest years study it. Disease, sickness, and death have all to be accounted for. They know nothing of malaria, filth, or contagion. Hence they hold that an enemy causes these things, and friends have to see that due punishment is made. The large night firefly helps to point in the direction of that enemy, or the spirits of departed ones ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... well as of His righteous judgment, then we can spread ourselves out before Him, as a woman will lay out her webs of cloth on the green grass for the sun to blaze down upon them, and bleach the ingrained filth out of them. We must first walk 'with God' before the consciousness that we are walking 'before' Him becomes one that we can entertain and not go mad. When we are sure of the 'with' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the flashboard with a splashing murmur at that distance, and ran down under the bridge in a rocky bed. It was clear and cool looking. Below the factories the river water was of an entirely different color, and people in Seacove had begun to object to the filth from the Elmvale mills ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... experienced a "conversion" such as stands at the head of many a religious career. A sudden beam of light, he says, came to him at this time from God, putting him to the proof and showing him in how deep an abyss of error and of filth he had been living. He thereupon abandoned his former life ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of Justice, and the greatest service we can render to the people of Bucarest is to advise visitors to give them a wide berth, or at least to content themselves with a look at the exterior. The interior of some portions at least vies, in filth and disorder, with the meanest of our police courts. The Government buildings are of a much higher order, and that of the Ministerial Council is very spacious and well furnished. None of the numerous churches of Bucarest are really fine, excepting in their external appearance, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... east, barometer 29 deg. 55". The crew employed this day landing stores, cleansing the decks from the accumulated filth and rubbish. The carpenters employed on the long boat. The stores landed were 3 baskets of sugar, 2 barrels of flour, 7 tierces and 1 barrel of salt provisions, 1 cask of vinegar, 1 puncheon of arrack, 2 cases of bottled ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... hath smeared filth upon your altar, And, slant-eyed and slime-lipped, wrought sins apart. His tongue intones an abominable psalter Hoarsely, and on his brows cold sweat-drops start,— Nor through your oracles speaks he ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... or if they had rather do their clients some good, they would change their defence into accusations. And the wicked themselves, if they could behold virtue abandoned by them, through some little rift, and perceive that they might be delivered from the filth of sin by the affliction of punishments, obtaining virtue in exchange, they would not esteem of torments, and would refuse the assistance of their defenders, and wholly resign themselves to their accusers and judges. By which ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... was the mask off than Fra Alberto was incontinent recognized of all, who raised a general outcry against him, giving him the scurviest words and the soundest rating was ever given a canting knave; moreover, they cast in his face, one this kind of filth and another that, and so they baited him a great while, till the news came by chance to his brethren, whereupon half a dozen of them sallied forth and coming thither, unchained him and threw a gown over him; ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... inner layer of "popple" bark is his chief dainty—he cannot understand and cannot tolerate this barbarian, who eats raw fish and leaves the bones and fins and the smell of slime in his doorway. The beaver is exemplary in his neatness, detesting all smells and filth; and this may possibly account for some of his enmity and his savage attacks upon Keeonekh when he catches him in ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... is great, for the sources of our life must be kept clean if we desire social health among our boys and girls. The land is full of the plague, of open moral sewers and unholy cesspools. The street reeks with the smut and filth of wrong sex knowledge, and our boys and girls are getting experience in the laboratory of the immoral. The Sunday school can help our common, public health by helping the parent. It should major on parental instruction and keep it up until the parents have been ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... interspersed with which were curious aloes, whose weird leafy tops gave them the aspect of shrubs growing upside down with their roots scrambling aimlessly in the air. In front stood the native hut, the wretchedness of whose outside was only equalled by the filth and poverty-stricken aspect within. Near to this were several native children, as black as coal, as impudent-looking as tom-tits, and as lively as crickets. Beyond all lay the undulating plains studded with flowering shrubs of varied form and hue, and bathed ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... one of whom introduced himself as the captain, and asked us, in French, to come on board. The vessel was the 'Gabrielle d'Estonville', of New Caledonia, commanded by Captain Jean Labonne, and had put into Rockingham Bay for water, during a 'beche-de-mer' expedition. Anything to equal the filth of the fair 'Gabrielle', I never saw. Her crew consisted of another Frenchman besides the captain, and of seven or eight Kanakas, two of whom had their wives on board. As perhaps this extraordinary trade is but little known to the reader who has not resided ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... song-birds—which were sporting about in them among merrily shouting children. We were astonished at the extraordinary cleanness of the streets; and the chief reason of this was said to be that, since the invention of automatic carriages, no draught animals kicked up dust or dropped filth in the streets ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... highness, did I not tell you that the man who saved your life and honor—who is covered with wounds received in your defense, and almost dead from loss of blood, spilled that you might be saved from worse than death—is now lying in a rayless dungeon, a place of frightful filth, such as you would not walk across for all the wealth of London Bridge; is surrounded by loathsome, creeping things that would sicken you but to think of; is resting under a charge whose penalty ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... better cantonments, but the food was neither better nor more abundant. The Emperor had only a thatched hovel for his headquarters at Osterode, and, as he wrote to his brother Joseph, lived in snow and filth, without wine, brandy, or bread. "We shall be in fine condition when we get bread," he said to Soult. "My position would be fine if I had food; the lack of food makes it only moderate," he wrote, on February twenty-seventh, to Talleyrand. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... There is no Bapaume now. It is perfectly understandable that the retreating soldiers should destroy their trenches and put up the question, "Tommy, how do you like your new trenches?" But why smear filth over the photograph of three little girls, a family treasure? All around Bapaume the villages were looted and the night the deliverers entered the destroyers made the sky lurid with the fires of towns and hamlets. Some 300 in ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Some disdained all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by their matted hair. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet.... St. Abraham, the hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly refused from that date ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... shame that when his arms were taken from her she fell to the ground, and lay there till the old Hottentot, her servant, ran to her, cursing and weeping with rage, and helped her to her feet. For a while she stood saying nothing, only wiping her face, as though filth had bespattered it, with the sun kapje which had fallen from her head, and her face was whiter than the white cap. At last she spoke in a ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... predominated, and had mostly that swollen, reddish, dark skin, the sign in this race of habitual drunkenness. Of course only the lowest whites were here—rag-pickers, pawnbrokers, old-clothes men, thieves, and the like. All of this, as it came before me, I viewed with mingled disgust and philosophy. I hated filth, but I understood that society has to stand on somebody, and I was only glad that I was not one of the undermost ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... relate concerning our beautiful ceremonies and the dignity of our prelates in their pontifical vestments. As to other matters I will only say that the Ethiopian is joyous and merry, not at all like the Tartar in the matter of filth, nor like the wretched Arab. They are refined and subtle, trusting no one, wonderfully suspicious, and very devout. They are not at all black as is commonly supposed, by which I refer to those who do not live under the equator or too near to it, for these ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... this furious ode, As tired he dragg'd his way thro' Plimtree road![27:2] Crusted with filth and stuck in mire Dull sounds the Bard's bemudded lyre; Nathless Revenge and Ire the Poet goad 5 To pour his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an hour the dismal receptacles to which the prostitute retires from her nocturnal excursions, and see the wretches that lie crowded together, mad with intemperance, ghastly with famine, nauseous with filth, and noisome with disease; it would not be easy for any degree of abhorrence to harden them against compassion, or to repress the desire which they must immediately feel to rescue such numbers of human beings from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... other works of God, and is beautiful in the eyes of every man; so shall all the faithful be beautiful and endued with honour and glory: although in this world they are but outcasts, and accounted as "The dross and filth of the world;" but in the other world, when the angels shall gather together the wicked, and cast them into the fire, then shall the elect shine as the sun in the kingdom of God. For no man can express the honour and glory that they shall have, who will be content ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... the balloon till it was hidden by the hills, and I thought of all that lay at the bottom of its rope. Beleaguered Ladysmith, with its shells, its flies, its fever, and its filth seemed a glorious paradise ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... often littered with the refuse which careless householders, reckless of fines, flung into the open way. In wet weather the rain roared along the kennel, converting all the accumulated filth of the thoroughfare into loathsome mud. The gutter-spouts, which then projected from every house, did not always cast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes soaked the unlucky passer-by who had not kept close to the wall. Umbrellas were ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... snow, as fast as it fell, was stained by soot and grime and lay in the streets a mass of filth. The breath of the laboring truck horses arose from their wide nostrils like clouds of steam and, in the icy air, covered their breasts and shoulders and sides with a coat of white frost. The newsboys and vendors of pencils and shoestrings shivered in nooks and corners and doorways and, as the people ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... bathing in the gutter. I picked it up. Underneath, it was soiled with mud; the greasy, fetid sewer water had left black stains upon the flowers. And then, gazing at these exquisite daughters of our gardens and our woods, astray amidst all the filth of the city, I began to ponder. On what woman's bosom would those wretched flowerets open and bloom? Some hawker would dip them in a pail of water, and of all the bitter odours of the Paris mud they would retain but a slight pungency, which ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... off the grass, ooze, shells, or sea-weed, which it has contracted by lying long in harbour; it is performed by holding kindled furze, faggots, or reeds to the bottom, which, by melting the pitch that formerly covered it, loosens whatever filth may have adhered to the planks; the bottom is then covered anew with a composition of sulphur, tallow, &c., which not only makes it smooth and slippery, so as to divide the fluid more readily, but also poisons and destroys those worms ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... decency must throw a veil; and yet this monster of vice was, according to Papist ... the vicar of God upon earth, and was addressed by the title of HIS HOLINESS!!" But why stir this cesspool of filth any longer? Is not that church of which Alexander VI. was for eleven years the crowned and anointed head—a necessary link in the boasted chain of holy apostolical succession, the pretended vicar of Christ upon earth—is it not, I ask, fitly described ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... since the homicide; over a hundred thousand dollars had been spent upon the case; every corner of the community had been deluged with detailed accounts of unspeakable filth and depravity; the moral tone of society had been depressed; and the only element which had profited by this whole lamentable and unnecessary proceeding had been the sensational press. Yet the sole reason for it all was that the law of the land ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... there are between forty and fifty houses in the three villages near there. In each of two houses, we found three wives and ten children, and the others were well populated. All were in ignorance, and filth, and degradation, pitiable to see. Some babies nearly a year old had never been thoroughly washed since their birth. Some of the older people had never been to the school-house. A few rather pride themselves upon keeping aloof ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... lofty firmament till night, Could he in this wide world descry the stair. He stood not, he, to mark the bulwark's plight Nor if the fosse of certain bottom were. He past, ran, — rather flew across the moat, Plunging in filth ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... that the floor of the canteen was of concrete, but upon this was a layer of mud, slime, grease, and other filth brought in from outside upon the boots of those who frequented the establishment. This was now a noisome muddy carpet some two inches in thickness. The Germans, one may happen to recollect, have ever paraded their love of cleanliness ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... his son-in-law, M. de Montesson, to the neighboring village, where there are judges. On the way "they dragged their victims on the ground, pummeled them, trampled on them, spit in their faces, and besmeared them with filth." M. de Montesson is shot, while M. Cureau is killed by degrees; a carpenter cuts off the two heads with a double-edged ax, and children bear them along to the sound of drums and violins. Meanwhile, the judges of the place, brought by force, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on a leaden anvil. And what do you gain by this suicidal habit? No plum has a sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin of your young face; but this mineral filth hides that delicate texture, and substitutes a dry, uniform appearance, more like a certain kind of leprosy than health. Nature made your face the rival of peaches, roses, lilies; and you say, 'No; I know better than my Creator and my God; my face shall be like a dusty miller's.' ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... was always above them, and his gifts of love were always the gifts of a prince to his subjects. All his life long he resented every attack on his person and on his honor, as a noble aristocrat would. When they poured the filth of their imaginations upon him, he cared no more for it than the eagle cares what the fly is thinking about him away down under the cloud. All the miserable traffickers, and all the scribblers, and all the aristocratic boobies of Boston were no more to him than mosquitoes are to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... toe of his right foot"; because it is in these parts that leprosy is first diagnosed and felt. In this rite, moreover, three liquids were employed: viz. blood, against the corruption of the blood; oil, to denote the healing of the disease; and living waters, to wash away the filth. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... been forc'd sometimes to throw up some such unhappy Truths as have confounded all the rest, and flown in their own Faces so violently, as in spight of Custom has made them blush and look downward; and tho' in kindness to one another they have carefully lickt up one anothers Filth, yet this unhappy squeamishness of Stomach has spoil'd all the Design, and turn'd the Appetites of their Party, to the no small prejudice of a Cause that stood in need of more Art and more Face to carry it on as it shou'd be with a thoro'-pac'd Case-harden'd Policy, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... represented Count Peter lying tied hand and foot, while people were throwing filth upon him; Count Charles being pourtrayed as meantime being kicked away from the command of a battery of cannon by, De la Motte. It seemed strange that the Mansfelds should, make themselves thus elaborately ridiculous, in order to irritate Farnese; but thus it was. There was so much stir, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of a dog, he wallows all the week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers of the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... nor cast down by my defeat. The political canvass served the purpose of giving me a new sensation, and introducing me to new phases of human nature—a subject which I had always great delight in studying. The filth and scandal, the slanders and vindictiveness, the plottings and fawnings, the fidelity, meanness and manliness,: which by turns exhibited themselves in the exciting scenes preceding the election, were novel to me, and were ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... by the fact that the English judges "were kinless loons." Northern cavaliers were relieved by Monk's forbidding civil magistrates to outlaw and plunder persons lying under Presbyterian excommunication, and sanitary measures did something to remove from Edinburgh the ancient reproach of filth, for the time. While the Protesters and Resolutioners kept up their quarrel, the Protesters claiming to be the only genuine representatives of Kirk and Covenant, the General Assembly of the Resolutioners was broken up (July 21, 1653) ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... have made her nest; Look in, how weet a wound is here! This is her chamber, here shall she rest, That she and I may sleep in fere. Here may she wash, if any filth were; Here is seat for all her woe; Come when she will, she shall have cheer ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing; wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save us, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... history, but it is certainly not pretty. It is nothing more than a box of dried mud with its roof, walls and floor all made of dirt. It is never free from a disagreeable earthy smell which, if mingled with the added odors of stale smoke and filth, as is often the case, makes the air simply vile. The house can never be kept tidy because of the dirt which falls from the adobe, unless the walls and ceilings are plastered and whitewashed, which is sometimes done in the better class of houses. If the house is well built ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... down the narrow stairway, through the sliding door, out into the many-odored street, foul with refuse, bisected by its open sewer of filth, took a turning into a still narrower street, climbed a precipitous hill cobbled with stone, turned still again, always overshadowed and hemmed in by tall houses close together, with black-beamed lattice ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... nothing new in human life: still the same motley picture—in reality so little complex—would unroll before him in its terrifying sameness. The same credulity and the same cruelty, the same lust of blood, of gold, of filth, the same vulgar pleasures, the same senseless sufferings in the name... why, in the name of the very same shams that Aristophanes jeered at two thousand years ago, the same coarse snares in which the many-headed beast, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Santiago is one of filth and poverty, dilapidated buildings and general decay; but if you climb the hills that encircle the city and look over the red-topped buildings to the glistening ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Africa, that brags her foison, Breeds no such prodigious poison, Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite— Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue; Blisters on the tongue would hurt you. 'Twas but in a sort I blamed ...
— English Satires • Various
... unfastened the door of the women's room and came out, following Telemachus. She found Ulysses among the corpses bespattered with blood and filth like a lion that has just been devouring an ox, and his breast and both his cheeks are all bloody, so that he is a fearful sight; even so was Ulysses besmirched from head to foot with gore. When she saw all the corpses and such a quantity of blood, she was beginning to cry out for joy, for ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... it's the way," she murmured to herself; "but those that have given up, there's no hope for them!—none! We live in filth, and grow loathsome, till we loathe ourselves! And we long to die, and we don't dare to kill ourselves!—No hope! no hope! no hope?—this girl now,—just as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... municipal laws, throughout the Middle Ages, Oxford had the proud distinction of being the cleanest city in England. That is to say, it was not quite so appallingly smothered in mire and filth as others were. Down the midst of every narrow street ran a gutter, which after rain was apt to become a brook, and into which dirt of every sort was emptied by every householder. There were no causeways; and there were frequent holes of uncertain ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... sometimes grew so sick and dizzy with the heat that she had to crawl into her pea hamper for shade instead of picking. There was much sickness in this camp, anyway. There was only one well, and it was not protected from filth. The flies were everywhere. Grandma boiled all the water, but she could not keep out the germ-laden flies. The family took turns lying miserably sick on an automobile-seat bed and wishing for ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... night, drought, cold, the desert, poisonous plants, thorns, beasts of prey, serpents, parasites (mosquitoes, fleas, bugs) and animals that live in dark holes—lizards, scorpions, toads, rats, ants. Likewise in the moral world life, purity, truth, work are good things and come from Ormuzd; death, filth, falsehood, idleness are bad, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... whole of the world, have of necessity adhered to the objects realised; as the carpenter who executes the plan of a building does not manage without chips and similar rubbish, or as architects cannot be made responsible for the dirty heaps of broken stones and filth one sees at the sites of buildings;" (l.c., c. 55). Celsus also might have written in this strain. The religious, absolute view is here replaced by a rational, and the world is therefore not the best absolutely, but the best possible. See ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... remarks (Epist. xi. 5) "that the Roman players hang down their heads, fix their eyes on the ground and keep them lowered, but are unable to blush in acting shame." According to Macrobius, who lived in the filth century ('Saturnalia,' B. vii. C. 11), "Natural philosophers assert that nature being moved by shame spreads the blood before herself as a veil, as we see any one blushing often puts his hands before his face." Shakspeare makes Marcus ('Titus Andronicus,' ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... crossed the great ocean which is a hundred Yojanas in width. And having slain the Rakshasis on the waters, I saw the chaste Sita within Ravana's harem, observing ascetic austerities, eager to behold her lord, with matted locks on head, and body besmeared with filth, and lean, and melancholy and helpless. Recognising her as Sita by those unusual signs, and approaching that worshipful lady while alone, I said, 'I am, O Sita, an emissary of Rama and monkey begotten by Pavana![93] Desirous of having a sight of thee, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in store for himself, if the "old man" was at home, partly with a vague, uncomfortable feeling that somehow Christmas Eve should be different from other nights, even in the alley; down to its farthest end, to the last rickety flight of steps that led into the filth and darkness of the tenement. Up this he crept, three flights, to a door at which he stopped and listened, hesitating, as he had stopped at the entrance to the alley; then, with a sudden, defiant gesture, he pushed it open and ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the girl born among the social filth of the faubourgs; the golden fly sprung from the rottenness below, that was tolerated and concealed, carrying in the fluttering of its wings the ferment of destruction, rising and contaminating the aristocracy, poisoning men only by alighting upon them, in the palaces through whose ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... disdain of geometry. But when one gets right into the town, a violent change comes over the scene. The cobbles that were so pleasantly medieval in the distance become, under one's feet, nothing but an ankle-turning plague. The stuccoed walls look very clean in the distance, but near to, the filth of the streets modifies one's admiration. A small French town generally reminds one of the outhouses and styes of a farm. The air is diffuse with the scent of manure. England, with all thy drainage ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice, and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. The hand of the boy, employed upon his head, and that of the shoe-black, in his bosom, are expressive of filth and vermin; and show that our hero is within a step of being overspread with the beggarly contagion. His obstinate continuance in his course, until awakened by the blows of the watchful beadle, point out to us, that "stripes ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... conscious again when Jason returned, and the sun was well above the horizon. The people were all awake now, a shuffling, scratching herd of about thirty men, women and children. They were identical in their filth and crude skin wrappings, milling about with a random motion or sitting blankly on the ground. They showed no interest at all in the two strangers. Jason handed a tarred leather cup to Mikah ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... poor one, containing perhaps sixty houses, but these are divided into three or four groups; the houses, with the exception of three or four stone and lime ones, are of the usual build, viz. of bamboo, and raised on muchauns. Filth and dirt abound every where, and the places immediately contiguous to the huts are ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... gladly have looked long, and not wearied. For they are all carven with the holy company of the martyrs and saints, like the Angels whom Jacob saw ascending by the ladder into heaven; even so that blessed company seemed to scale upwards from the filth of the street, and the darkness, and the din, right on towards the golden heights of the City of God. And beneath them lie the sacred bones of all the kings of France, from the days of St. Dagobert even to our own time, all laid ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... boys with both their hands cut off so that it was impossible for them to carry guns. Everywhere was filth and utter desolation. The helpless little babies, lying on the cold, wet cement floor and crying for proper nourishment, were enough to bring hot tears ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... world Throw all their scandalous malice upon me? 'Cause I am poor, deform'd, and ignorant; And like a bow, buckled and bent together, By some more strong in mischiefs than myself: Must I for that be made a common sink For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues, To fall and run into? some call me witch; And, being ignorant of myself, they go About to teach me how to be one; urging That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various |
