"Filth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Segulliak, and the brethren returned their visits, as far as the deep snow and excessive cold would permit. The friendly reception they met with upon these occasions, and the willingness with which the heathen heard the word, reconciled the missionaries to the filth and inconvenience they had to encounter. Of these the following specimen will enable the reader to form ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... earthly things. And to rub with the hands is, by examples of virtue, to put from the purity of their minds the concupiscence of the flesh, as men do husks. To eat the grains is when a man, cleansed from the filth of vice by the mouths of preachers, is incorporated amongst the members of the Church.'—Bede, quoted in the Catena Aurea. Commentary on St. Mark, cap. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... seem an exception to the rule laid down by some writers, that no people can flourish who do not rest every seventh day. In many ways they are an abnormal people, one striking point in their condition being the state of dirt and filth in which they not only exist, but increase and multiply. The children look healthy and happy too, in spite of these apparent drawbacks, and notwithstanding the fact that in many cases their poor little feet must be cruelly tortured by the practice ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... dark interior of the ship was filled with a steaming mass of human beings densely huddled together, the captains set sail for Queensland, where they landed those of their living cargoes who had escaped the deadly pestilence which filth and confinement always engendered in ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... produced an evil. Having been permitted to build themselves huts on each side of and near the stream of water which supplied the town of Sydney, they had, for the convenience of procuring water, opened the paling, and made paths from each hut; by which, in rainy weather, a great quantity of filth ran into the stream, polluting the water of which every one drank. It therefore became an object of police; and the governor prohibited removing the paling, or keeping hogs in the neighbourhood of the stream, under penalty ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... everybody, some for their meanness, others—well, I do not know why—just so! And now I see all the people in a different way. I am grieved for them all! I cannot understand it; but my heart turned softer when I recognized that there is truth in men, and that not all are to blame for their foulness and filth." ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... protected with maternal care, your daughter has only known the brutal indifference of jailers; and then one day, society, in its cruel carelessness, cast her, innocent and pure, beautiful and ingenuous, into the filth and mire of this great city. Unhappy child, abandoned, without support, without advice, delivered to all the chances of misery and vice! Oh!" cried Rudolph, giving free vent to the sobs which overpowered ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... 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 of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the wider meaning of Flaubert's fiction, a meaning more amply expressed in Salammbo, where not one foolish woman alone but thousands on thousands of men, women, and children, mingled with charging elephants and vipers, flounder and fight in indescribable welters of blood and filth, and go down to rot in a common pit. If I read Flaubert's meaning right, all human history is there; you may show it by painting on broad canvas a Carthaginian battle-scene or by photographing the details of a modern bedroom: ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... The system of drainage in Yezdi-Ghazt is simple, the sewage being thrown over, to fall, haphazard, on the ground immediately below. I nearly had a practical illustration during my examination, which, however, did not last long, for the side of the rock glistened with the filth of years, and the stench and flies ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... spirit of narrow exclusiveness and self centred egoism—even if it were sometimes an egoisme a deux—evoked, half a century ago, the scathing sarcasm of James Hinton, who never wearied of denouncing the "virtuous and happy homes" which he saw as "floating blotches of verdure on a sea of filth." Such outbursts seem extravagant, but they were the extravagance of an idealist at the vision which, as a physician in touch with realities, he had, seen beneath the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... by the early part of the last century was a byword for all that was squalid and filthy. Its rookeries and slums are thus described in a newspaper cutting of 1845: "All around are poverty and wretchedness; the streets and alleys are rank with the filth of half a century; the windows are half of them broken, or patched with rags and paper, and when whole are begrimed with dirt and smoke; little brokers' shops abound, filled with lumber, the odour ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... whole thing—the horror, the pain, the ugliness. War isn't a khaki uniform or a drill parade—everything I've read in old histories haunts me. I lie awake at night and see things that have happened—see the blood and filth and misery of it all. And a bayonet charge! If I could face the other things I could never face that. It turns me sick to think of it—sicker even to think of giving it than receiving it—to think of thrusting ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and fixed property increase in value; the magazines, instead of being the receptacles of filth and crime, will be full of the richest foreign and domestic productions, and all will be energy and activity, because the reward will be in proportion to the labour. Your river will be filled with ships, and ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... gifted with less refinement, paraded the streets in rags and filth, and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... wetting it spoil the tone?" the lady asks. "Not in the least, ma'am," is the reply. "In fact, it will be improved, as at present there is so much grease and filth that the vibration would be seriously interfered with. When it is quite clean there will be more freedom, and the true character ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... things were left to moulder away in dust and filth, and the worship of God was, if not inwardly profaned, at least outwardly dishonoured. Nor did this arise from real poverty, but from indifference, sloth, preoccupation of mind about vain earthly concerns, and often also from egotism and spiritual ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... in taking no notice of what the malice of Pickering could say of you. Were such things to be answered, our lives would be wasted in the filth of fendings and provings, instead of being employed in promoting the happiness and prosperity of our fellow-citizens. The tenor of your life is the proper and sufficient answer. It is fortunate for those in public trust, that posterity will judge ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... bismuth would probably have the same ill effect. As the red paint is prepared from cochineal, which is an animal body, less if any injury arises from its use, as it only lies on the skin like other filth. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... than the captivating one from the harbour. The population long ago over-ran the limits of the old city so that to-day most of the people are outside the walls. Within those ancient battlements, the streets are narrow and crooked, while the filth is indescribable. The visitor who wishes to see something of the work and to enjoy the hospitality of the noble company of Presbyterian missionaries on Temple Hill must either pass through that reeking mess or go around it. There is, after all, not much choice ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... town where our billets were, we found our company quartered in an old barn. It was dirty, and there was a pigpen at one end,—very smelly in the August heat. We flopped in the ancient filth. The cooties were very active, as we were drenched with sweat and hadn't had a bath since heavens knew when. We had had about ten minutes' rest and were thinking about getting out of the harness when ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... a ridotto, and on Wednesday we return to Howard Grove. The Captain says he won't stay here to be smoked with filth any longer; but, having been seven years smoked with a burning sun, he will retire to the country, and sink into a fair weather chap. Adieu, my ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... of the young girl who has spent her morning reading the Colin Campbell divorce case; so says the age we live in. The penny paper that may be bought everywhere, that is allowed to lie on every table, prints seven or eight columns of filth, for no reason except that the public likes to read filth; the poet and novelist must emasculate and destroy their work because.... Who shall come forward and make answer? Oh, vile, filthy, and hypocritical century, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the sun wouldn't seem so bright in holes like this," he mused. "I thought everything would be dull and dim. Instead of which, he glares into every cranny and corner, as if he were pointing at all the filth and squalid misery, and makes it ten times more abominable." Nor did the slanting rays light up anything pleasant and fresh in the bedroom itself. It was shabby and small, with coarsely-papered walls and a discolored ceiling. Percival remarked that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... "really" is. In its essence realism is the artist's personal vision of the fact, exactly as idealism or romanticism or impressionism is personal. For after all, what is the reality? A chance newsboy is offering his papers on a crowded street corner. The fine lady recoils from his filth and from all contact with him; the philanthropist sees in him a human being to help and to redeem; the philosopher regards him dispassionately as a "social factor," the result of heredity and environment; the artist cries out in joy as his eye lights upon good stuff to paint. But all the while, ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... onwards in triumph, in other moods he felt himself at the opposite extreme: "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world and to angels and to men; we are made as the filth of the world and are the offscourings of all things"; the reference being to the gladiators whose cheap lives were sacrificed to ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... secret of poor Mr. Fearing's life- long trouble. Just so; it was the slough in himself that so kept poor Mr. Fearing back. This poor pilgrim, who had so little to fear in his past life, had yet so much scum and filth, spume and mire in his present heart, that how to get on the other side of that cost him not a month's roaring only, but all the months and all the years till he went over the River not much above ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... my mind to put the damn thing on again," said Andrews in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself; "I feel so clean and free. It's like voluntarily taking up filth and slavery again.... I think I'll just walk off naked ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... weak was Suzanne with 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 ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... wife, who was still engaged in removing the filth of an entire year from her person, at the expense of the material and moral cleanliness of the poor rivulet, and having attracted her attention by a whistle, he deigned to address her ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... making a Noise, then take them out and wipe them well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them shels and all in a Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, scowre them with salt, slit them, and wash well with water from their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat them in pieces, then lay in the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two handfuls, and two handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of Rosemary flowers, Bearsfoot, Agrimony, red Dock ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... cares—there has been a peculiar charm in ranch life. In no life are the grit and efficiency of the well-bred in such marked contrast with the puling whine and shiftlessness of the settler from the cesspool of the city slums. I have gone into a prairie shanty where an Englishwoman sat in filth and rags and idleness, cursing the country to which she had come and bewailing in cockney English that she had come to this; and I have gone on to an English ranch where there presided some young Englishman's sister, who had literally never done a stroke in her life till she came ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... of a superior kind; but the poor body is naturally only earth; why do you labor about it to no purpose? if you shall learn nothing else, you will learn from time that the body is nothing. But if a man comes to me daubed with filth, dirty, with a moustache down to his knees, what can I say to him, by what kind of resemblance can I lead him on? For about what has he busied himself which resembles beauty, that I may be able to change him and say, Beauty is not in this, but in that? Would you have me to tell him, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... process. Two of 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 grease is laid upon ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... the water deepened. It was half way to his knees when he plunged unexpectedly into another tube running at right angles to the first. The bottom of this tube was lower than that of the one which emptied into it, so that Barney now found himself in a swiftly running stream of filth that reached above his knees. Downward he followed this flood—faster now for the fear of the deadly gases which might overpower him before he ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sunshine, the brittle blue skies, the crowded little lanes full of filth and feet and eternal noise. Perhaps there in the old home he might find eyes that held a bit of the great love he longed for, a voice that had in it the hint of a caress, the note that would give him new courage, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... crying in the night, of a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror of dead bodies; they are dreadful to me—dreadful. I dread their stiff attitudes, their terrible intent ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... wild and romantic, but good for little or nothing for farming purposes. The houses are mostly built of logs, being little more than mere huts, and around each of these 'mansions' may be seen at least a dozen young 'tow-heads,' who are brought up in ignorance and filth. The inhabitants are lazy and ignorant, raising hardly enough to keep starvation from their doors. School houses are almost unknown; we did not see one in the whole course of our march; the consequence is, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... posting one of his squares of paper bearing the words: Pyrot is innocent, Maubec is guilty, the riotous crowd showed signs of the most violent anger. They called after him, "Traitor, thief, rascal, scoundrel." A woman opened a window and emptied a vase full of filth over his head, a cabby sent his hat flying from one end of the street to the other by a blow of his whip amid the cheers of the crowd who now felt themselves avenged. A butcher's boy knocked Colomban with his paste-pot, his brush, and his posters, from the top of his ladder into the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... world. She knew that the kid grew into a big goat, and became very wicked, for he ran at her one day, throwing her to the ground and hurting her severely; so sin came into her world. She saw innate depravity exemplified in the conduct of her innocent white pig, that would take to puddles and filth in spite of her gentle endeavors to restrain its wayward impulses. Her puppies too bit each other, would quarrel over a bone, growl and get generally unmanageable. None of her animals fulfilled the promise of their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and even tho in the lower part of the town trenches were dug to drain the streets, they remained mere swamps and morasses. In dry weather the dust was even a worse plague than the mud. Pig-styes stood in front of the houses; and the streets were covered with heaps of filth and manure and with rotting corpses of animals, over which the pigs wandered at will. Street police in fact was practically non-existent. Medievalism is undoubtedly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... spectators—about forty men, twenty women, and one child who could not have been more than five years old. They were all scantily clothed in that salmon-colored cloth which one associates with Hindu mendicants, and, at first sight, gave me the impression of a band of loathsome fakirs. The filth and repulsiveness of the assembly were beyond all description, and I shuddered to think what their life in the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... wrote to B——, the brother of the empress's physician, and to-day he came to our house. He devotes himself to painting. After this visit, we went out. Oh! the ugly city, the impure air! What a deplorable mixture of ancient magnificence and modern filth! ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... permanent good. That was my faith. It has gone. How can there be a good God to look down on His people tortured and maimed and butchered? The women whose lives were devoted to Him, defiled. His temples looted, filled with the filth of the soldiery, and then destroyed. And yet no sign. Oh, no. My faith is gone. Now I want to murder and torture and massacre the foul brutes.... I'm going out, Dartrey. In any way. Just a private. I'll dig, carry my load, eat ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... or playthings. She was in a sort of wonder-world. She could not satisfy herself with regard to the meaning of the change brought about in her during the last hour or two. That pleasant kitchen, the neat dress she wore, the bath by which she had been cleansed from the filth of poverty, the pleasant faces she had seen, and the kind voices she had heard, all seemed to her like a gay dream, and she was expecting, ay, and fearing too, that the next minute she should awake and find herself sitting and shivering in the cold wind, under the stone wall, waiting for ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... hole; a bed of wattles in a corner, and in the centre a greasy table with a three-legged stool and a crazy chair beside it. The floor was black with age and filth, and broken everywhere by rat-holes. She set her noisome, smoking oil lamp on the table, and with some apology for the rudeness of the chamber she asked in tones almost defiant if my ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... small Italian provincial towns south of the Apennines, are apt to be; huge, gloomy, shapeless masses of brickwork and mouldering plaster, something between a mediaeval fortress and a convent; great black archways, where the refuse of the house, the filth of the town, has peaceably accumulated (and how much more in those days); magnificent statued staircases given over to the few servants who have replaced the armed bravos of two centuries ago; long suites of rooms, vast, resounding like so many churches, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... co-operate in that which is being done for the advantage of your town. When it was suffering from a long drought, our grandfather, with God's help, watered it with the life-giving wave. Cleanse out then the mouths of your sewers, lest otherwise, being checked in its flow by the accumulated filth, it should surge back into your houses, and bring into them the pollution which it was ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... determined to outdo the monk in denunciation, 'but the vilest of evils, not honeycomb and venom but filth and venom. Though as fair as roses the beginning the end is gall and wormwood; heartache and misery are the end of love. Why then do we seek passion when we may find happiness ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... good spirit constantly keeps all about it swept and watered, without any labor of man being required. A king of corrupt views once said, "Since you are able to do this, I will lead a multitude of troops and reside there till the dirt and filth has increased and accumulated, and see whether you can cleanse it away or not." The spirit thereupon raised a great wind, which blew the filth away, and ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... wish to return me so much evil. Believe, boldly too, that the King of Spain will never trust men who have abandoned the party to which they belonged, and from which they have received so many benefits, and will never believe a word of what they promise him. Yet, in order to cover up their filth, they spread the story that the Queen of England is thinking of treating for peace without their knowledge. No, I would rather be dead than that any one should have occasion to say that I had not kept my promise. But princes must listen to both sides, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... atmosphere of discouragement and despair. There is no strength in weakness, no encouragement in foul air, vile food, and dank dens. They are there because they are so made that they are not fit to be higher up; but filth and obscenity do not strengthen the neck, nor does chronic emptiness ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... mean. The bete is too conscious of his moral fibre when he's respectable, and when he isn't respectable he doesn't commit picturesque crimes, he steals and boozes. I dare say he's bestial enough, but pure unrelieved filth can't be transmuted into literature, and as a people we're perfectly devoid of that extraordinary artistic nature that it makes such a foil for in the Latins. That is really the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... below the cave a cell, where the poor human creature lay buried in damps and darkness. Reckoning upon her speedy death, her dread companions had not even the kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing of her ulcer. There, as she lay in her own filth, she suffered alike from pain and want of cleanliness. The whole night long she was disturbed by the running to and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison, who were wont to nibble men's ears ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... third thereof in seeking his living, another in prayer and repose and the other in the pursuits of knowledge;[FN108] for a reasonable man without knowledge is a barren land, which hath no place for tillage, tree-planting or grass-growing. Except it be prepared for filth and plantation, no fruit will profit therein; but, if it be tilled and planted, it bringeth forth goodly fruits. So with the man lacking education; there is no profit in him till knowledge be ranted in him; then cloth he bear fruit." Q "What ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 means it cometh ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... difficult now to comprehend the ferocity of laws which made 235 offenses—punishable with death,—most of which we should now call misdemeanors. But perhaps death was better than the prisons, which were the abode of vermin, disease and filth unspeakable. Jailers asked for no pay, but depended upon the money they could wring from the wretched beings in their charge for food and small alleviations to their misery. In 1773 John Howard commenced ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... often squalor, poverty, dust, filth, and uncomeliness within these old and beautiful homes. Doubtless often the dwellers therein were housed like cattle and slept like pigs, and looked but once out to the woods and waters of the landscapes round for one hundred times that they looked at their hidden silver in an old delf jug, or ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Americans captured by the British had long engaged Washington's attention, and reference to it here is in point. Many of their prisoners were confined in old ships, where they suffered all that hunger, thirst, filth, and abuse could inflict. On account of the dreadful sufferings endured by the prisoners, these ships were ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... pleasure to lug them. This goes on in spite of a reciprocal untidiness which is indescribable; for the English poor children have the very dirtiest faces in the world, unless the Scotch have dirtier ones; but nothing, no spotting or thick plastering of filth, can obscure their inborn sweetness. I think, perhaps, they wash up a little when they come to play in Kensington Gardens, to sail their ships on its placid waters and tumble on its grass. When they enter the palace, to look at the late queen's dolls and toys, as they do ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... are thoroughly drained, for not only are there surface gutters, but deep drains which carry all the filth into the sea. Here, again, they are in advance of many civilised people. Some of the best houses are built of stone, but they are usually constructed of a framework of bamboo and laths, which is covered ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... scenes of a most repulsive nature. Women with scarcely the articles of apparel which common decency requires, with forms bloated by disease, and faces rendered hideous by habitual drunkenness—men reeling and staggering along—children in rags and filth—whole streets of squalid and miserable appearance, whose inhabitants are lounging in the public road, fighting, screaming, and swearing—these are the common objects which present themselves in, these are the well-known characteristics of, that portion of London ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... get in?" cried the Turk, "I believe he's a mere common chimneysweeper out of the streets, for he's all over dirt and filth. I never saw such a dress at a masquerade before ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... like ruddy apples and their beards were drabbled with gravy. Then they dropped the remains on the floor and with their boot toes rubbed them over the mud that had dropped from their heels. When the flesh was well covered with filth, the two halves of the carcass were lifted by the sword point and flung back on the table with the words, "A feast they would have!" The soldiers cast their eyes over the angry but silent company, and ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... over France, such of them as by their laxity deserved to die, ceased at once to exist, and poured forth their inmates to swell the ranks of a corrupt society, and add religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world. Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God had not ceased to dwell, were indeed closed and emptied; but their inmates endeavored to live their lives of religion in some unknown ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the War isn't missed; there's a murrain of strikes Where a paper can take any side that it likes; We are done with denouncing the filth of the Bosch, But we still have our own dirty linen to wash; Though we trade with the brute as a man and a brother, Our Warriors still can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... busines shall her prayers[2] let. Those that bee good, shee prizes most, Noe time with them shee counteth lost. 30 Her chast delights, her mind, aduance Above Lot-games or mixed dance. Shee cares not for an enterlude, Or idly will one day conclude. The looser toungs that filth disclose 35 Are graueolencie to her nose. But when a vertuous man shall court Her virgin thoughts in nuptiall sort: Her faire depor[t]ment, neyther coy Nor yet too forward, fits his ioy, 40 And giues his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... advised to take first. They stood about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two and two along the dirty pavement, with their little hands tucked into their sleeves across their breasts, aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth around them, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical sneer of faint surprise to which all aspects of our civilization seem to move their superiority. Their numbers gave character to the street, and rendered not them, but what was foreign to them, strange there; so that March had a sense of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for,—if they could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretending to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter corruption! These horrible works are the inward and secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and intolerable to beetles and bees. Oil also, which is useful to men, destroys wasps and bees if sprinkled on them; and sea-water, while it is unpleasant and poisonous to men if they drink it, is most agreeable and sweet to fishes. Swine also prefer to wash in vile filth rather than in pure clean water. Furthermore, some 56 animals eat grass and some eat herbs; some live in the woods, others eat seeds; some are carnivorous, and others lactivorous; some enjoy putrified food, and others ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... and looked about me at the flush deck of the little schooner. I was already half prepared by the sounds I had heard for what I saw. Certainly I never beheld a deck so dirty. It was littered with scraps of carrot, shreds of green stuff, and indescribable filth. Fastened by chains to the mainmast were a number of grisly staghounds, who now began leaping and barking at me, and by the mizzen a huge puma was cramped in a little iron cage far too small even to give ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... reverence nor sense of honor, do nothing except as they are driven to it by blows, and perpetrate what wrong and detraction they can behind each other's back; therefore God also punishes them, that they sink into all kinds of filth and misery. As a rule, the parents, too, are themselves stupid and ignorant; one fool trains [teaches] another, and as they have lived, so live their children after ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... if one halted a bit or turned to the right or left in indecision. He had talked with women of every port. They were a huge band, a great sisterhood that reached thin hands about the earth, touching it with shame; and they congregated most where the rivers empty their burden of filth into the sea. Uncle William knew them well. He could steer a safe path among them; and he could turn a young man, hesitating, with foolish, confident smile on his face. Uncle William had not been in New York for twelve years, but he had a sailor's unerring instinct ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... children roll about on the grass. These people live in the open air, regardless of everybody, setting their pots boiling, eating nameless things, freely displaying their tattered garments, and sleeping, fighting, kissing, and reeking with mingled filth and misery. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... ample opportunity for supplementing Mr. Murray's paper on the Ethnological Classification of Vermin; and he may further observe that the Eskimo, whatever may be his religious belief or predilection, apparently observes the prohibitions of the Talmud in regard both to filth and getting rid of noxious entomological specimens that ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth, and the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so dear to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the short intervals of rest from commercial life, badly cooked meals were hurriedly eaten, at a bare wooden table, listening all the while for the tinkle of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but the street, ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... in such filth that my son wallows. And consider the situation in which it puts me: with what feelings, with what front shall I henceforward face my ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... they have agreed that the fine art of letters should be to spray the attar of posies to counteract the noisome smells of that which is rotten in the state of the world, where the many reek and sweat in filth and poverty that the few ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... looked at him. "Because we'd been fearing that all your travelling and sight-seeing might have harmed you—that you'd be thinking a bit like the folk up-along with their cars and gas and filth. Aye, it's a changed world up there, Mr. Harry; but down-along there's no difference. It's the ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... "conventicles," were sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. It is calculated that twenty-five thousand Dissenters were immured in gloomy prisons, and that four thousand of the sect of the Quakers died during their imprisonment in consequence of the filth and malaria of the jails, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... describing the deplorable estate of religion under the Jewish law, speak in figures: 'Her tomb was in the rubbish and filth cast forth of the temple, and acacia wove its branches over her monuments;' akakia being the Greek word for innocence, or being free from sin; implying that the sins and corruptions of the old law, and devotees of the Jewish ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... by the sailors the "foretop." It was composed of rude mud hovels, stuffed with a population of half-breeds, a half-naked gipsy-looking people, grovelling in the dirt, and breathing an atmosphere reeking with the stench of filth, garlic and frying fat. I was glad to escape, and get to the "Star Hotel," where, refreshing myself with a chop and brown stout, I could fancy myself, with hardly an effort of the imagination, taking my dinner at ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... kept dry and sufficiently warm. The living space, also, must be adequate for the number that are raised. Domestic fowls are not discriminating as to their food, and when they are forced to live in dirt and filth they will eat more or less of it and thus injure the quality of their flesh. Poultry that comes into the market looking drawn and thin, with blue-looking flesh and no fat, shows evidence of having had poor living conditions ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... loathsome leper into health. The portentous chasm between wealth and poverty must be bridged by a span of personal kindness over which the footsteps must turn in only one direction. The personal contact of self sacrificing benevolence with darkness, filth and misery—that is the only remedy. Heart must touch heart. Benevolence also cannot be confined to calendars. Those good people will exhibit the most of the spirit of our Blessed Master who practice Christmas-giving and cheerful, unselfish and ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... lose our caste; we should be allowed to eat and drink with our tribe, but not to perform worship with them nor to assist in burial rites. If a woman piles up a heap of stones and puts her petticoat upon it and throws filth upon it and says to any other, 'This disgrace fell upon your ancestors for seven generations back,' both are immediately expelled from our caste, and cannot return to it until they have paid a ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... candles, and at night would throw the bodies of the dead into the river or the canal. The ships lay wearily at quarantine out in the bay, and the chorus of bells striking the hour at night was heard over the quiet waters. Officers patrolled the streets, inspected drains and cesspools where the filth of ages had collected, giving the forgotten corners of Manila such a cleaning as they never had ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Vesnez!' he hailed. 'Cestui a comforter!' The thin men made to break away, halted, hesitated, and then with dragging feet made through the pools and filth ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... ruins, what filth, what rubbish! How present is the sense of impending dissolution! And what is this: large pools of water in the middle of the road! Granted that there is more rain here than formerly, since the valley of the Nile has been artificially irrigated, it still seems almost ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... for anything," said the other calmly. But truly Amos was staggered when he entered the room where sat, in the midst of gloom and filth, the man who had been the cause of so much distress to him and his. The atmosphere was oppressive with the concentrated foulness of numberless evil odours. A bed there was in the darkest corner of the room on the floor. It looked as though composed ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... unquestionably indicates disease. I speak now of the quays and adjacent streets; and the cause is very apparent. The wharfs are faced with wood, and the retiring of the tide exposes a rotten vegetable substance to the action of an almost tropical sun, which, added to the filth that is invariably found in the neighbourhood of shipping, is quite sufficient to produce the degree of unhealthiness that exists. On going up the town, the appearance of the inhabitants gradually improves, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... has been attached to the finding of the bones, but it should be remembered that they were not discovered till twenty-five days after the disappearance of Father Tomasso; that the sewer where the bones were found was the common receptacle of all the filth and offal of the neighbourhood, and that considerable difference of opinion existed among the medical men by whom they were examined as to the fact of their being human bones at all; while there are strong grounds for believing ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... was the sorcerer appointed for lovers. The mancocolam was the sorcerer or witch who belched forth fire from himself, which could not be extinguished with any application except by his rolling himself in the ordure and filth that falls from the houses into the silong; and the master of the house where he rolled himself died and there was no remedy. The hocloban was another kind of sorcerer more efficacious than the others, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... awful crash, separating into rings in the air, upon the foul bed which had been prepared for him: a shapeless mass of shattered metal and stone lying in uneven coils like some mighty serpent. The wooden sentry-boxes in the square reeled round and fell, while a cloud of filth and dust obscured the fallen monster, and men looked awe-struck at one another like naughty children who had broken something which they ought not to have dared to touch. The moment of compunction was a short one, and a howling ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... and their children's dirt as their own dishonour, and to understand that womanhood has its share of duties in social and domestic life? Will the sense of beauty grow with the sense of proprietorship, and the filth of the present surroundings be replaced by a flower garden before the cottage—a creeper against the wall—a few pots of more delicate blooms in the window? Will the taste for variety in garden produce be enlarged, and plots of peas, beans, carrots, artichokes, pot-herbs, and the like, ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... south of Dock street. She would dismount, leave her horse to the groom, and, with a heavily mounted, silver-topped whip in hand, and her riding-petticoat gathered up, would march along, picking her way through mud and filth. Here she contrived to find the queer china things she desired, or in some mysterious way she secured cordials and such liquors as no one ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... flooding it with fresh air and sunshine and applying freely and vigorously broom, brush and plenty of soap and water. Instead of purifying it, the antiseptics and germ killers would only add to the filth in ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... of God. We are beloved of God because we despise ourselves, we judge and 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 means by ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... drinking contest. The wealthy, learned, and artistic city of Nuernberg possessed a public wagon which every night was led through the streets, to pick up and convey to their homes drunken burghers found lying in the filth of the streets."[23] ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... I saw that day, in an ordinary town like Riverville. Maybe living so long as I have done on the clean, fresh desert and in the pure air of the hills, made it seem worse to me, but anybody would have been horrified at what she showed me. When I exclaimed over the filth and foul odors, as we picked our way over the ash-piles and garbage and slimy pools in one back yard, and said that people might at least keep themselves clean, even if they were poor, she turned on ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... men's longings, and God will meet them so far as meeting them is for men's good. But the characteristics of the prophet are set in strong contrast to those of the diviners and magicians, and lift the order high above all the filth and folly of these others. First, the prophet is 'raised up' by God; the individual holder of the office has his 'call' and does not 'prophesy out of his own heart.' The man who takes this office on himself without such a call is ipso facto branded as a false prophet. Then ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pamphlets, hymn-books, and other pestiferous productions, were constantly issuing to the annoyance of government. Many lawless and uproarious individuals enjoyed the Count's hospitality. All the dregs and filth of the provinces, according to Doctor Viglius, were accumulated at Viane as in a cesspool. Along the placid banks of the Lech, on which river the city stands, the "hydra of rebellion" ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... faces, protuberant bellies, and thin, ill-formed legs. Passing southwards, we come to the negro tribes, with their sooty skins, broad noses, thick lips, projecting jawbones, and partially-webbed fingers. And then we find ourselves among the squalid Hottentots, repulsively ugly, and begrimmed with filth; or the still more miserable Bushmen. Passing eastwards, after taking leave of the Persian and Indian branches of the Caucasian race, we meet with the squat Mongolian, with his high cheek bones set on a broad face, and his compressed, unintellectual, pig-like ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... tumbles into it. When she is finally hauled out, not without difficulty and amid the gibes of the other servants, she falls like a tigress upon her rival, and the two roll in the dirt and become such a reeking ball of filth that no one ventures to touch them to pull them apart. But Uli has had enough of them both and is entirely cured, though not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... villages, and were behaving 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
... of toil.' Oh! monsieur, do you know what those sacred marks of toil mean? They mean all the gossip of the workroom, the whispered scandal, the mind soiled by all the filth that is talked; they mean lost chastity, foolish chatter, all the wretchedness of their everyday life, all the narrowness of ideas which belongs to women of the lower orders, combined to their fullest extent in the girl whose fingers bear the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18), after describing how the filth is thus thrown out, says:—'The maid calls gardy loo to the passengers, which signifies Lord have mercy ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... oily, insinuating tones, his greasy smile and his monstrous self-conceit grated on my nerves till sometimes I was all in a tremble. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I have ever met. The filth of his cooking was indescribable; and, as he cooked everything that was eaten aboard, I was compelled to select what I ate with great circumspection, choosing from the least ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... this upper 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 ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... curses. The witch-finders travelled the path on which they had set the feet of many. The king drew near to look. He came alone, and all who had done his bidding bent their heads and crept past him, praising him as they went. Only I stood still, covered, as I was with mire and filth, for I did not fear to stand in the presence of the king. Chaka drew near, and looked at the piled-up heaps of the slain and the cloud of dust that yet hung ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... long life he did pick up, at different times, a goodly number of coins, gold and silver. But all these years, while he was looking for them, he saw not that the heavens were bright above him, and nature beautiful around. He never once allowed his eye to look up from the mud and filth in which he sought his treasure; and when he died—a rich old man—he only knew this fair earth as a dirty road to pick up money as you walk along. Thus you see the desire of having is the sin ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... other and meaner description of employment is performed by slaves, scil. cleaning the house, cleaning away filth, &c. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... institutions like our own, consisting of royalty, government and organized society. Cleanliness in all things is their aim: and so they never alight in any place where there is filth or an evil odour, or even where there is a strong savour of such an unguent as we may consider agreeable. For the same reason if one who approaches them is covered with perfume,[203] they do not lick him as flies ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... son suckling at her breast. At the prow Simon Meyerburg again, his peasant cap pushed backward and his black eyes, with the seer's light in them, gleaming ahead for the first glimpse of the land of fulfilment. An unbelievable city sucking them immediately into its slums. Filth. A quick descent into squalor. A second son. A third. A fourth. A fifth. A girl child. Mouths too eager for black bread. Always the struggle and the sour smell of slums. Finally light. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the worship of the sun, and of fire as his emblem, the Parsee grew into a sort of reverence for the elements of air, earth and water. The air must not be contaminated by foul odors, and of necessity no filth could be tolerated anywhere in house, street or suburb; and to this reverence for the purity of the atmosphere may be traced the absolute cleanliness for which Fire-worshipers are everywhere noted. As the earth must receive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... to death, others had their hands and feet frozen. The rebel guards would occasionally, and on the least pretence, fire into the prison from mere demonism and wantonness. All the horrors that can be named, starvation, lassitude, filth, vermin, despair, swift loss of self-respect, idiocy, insanity, and frequent murder, were there. Stansbury has a wife and child living in Newbern—has written to them from here—is in the U. S. light-house employ still—(had ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... underground. Hence, the former, electricity, has three chances to the latter's one to meet the whims, opinions, or decisions of municipal authorities. Other advantages accruing from mechanical methods are cleaner streets, absence of noise, quick time, no blockades, no stables accumulating filth and breeding pestilence, and lastly the great moral sympathetic feeling for man's most faithful and valuable servant, the horse. These all are directly in favor ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... But a city of peace, of restful spaces, of leisured men and women; a city of fine streets and pleasant houses, where each could live his own life, learning freedom, individuality; a city of noble schools; of workshops that should be worthy of labour, filled with light and air; smoke and filth driven from the land: science, no longer bound to commercialism, having discovered cleaner forces; a city of gay playgrounds where children should learn laughter; of leafy walks where the creatures of the wood and field should be as welcome guests helping to teach ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome |
