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Revulsion Quotes

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Revulsion Quotes

“In a lifeworld, where we can be what we are, and not what people expect us to be, we can escape a blank and void existence, which is linked to wrecking ennui. Boredom often slips into revulsion and nausea, for not being able to find an identity and not succeeding in acquiring individuality with the quality of authenticity. ("Like a frozen image")”

PeopleExistenceIndividualityAuthenticityVoidBlankLinkedFrozenEscapeImageEnnuiExpectRevulsionSucceedingTo BeSlipWreckingAcquiringBoredomeLife World
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“I've tried here to delineate some of the differences between science fiction and horror, science fiction and fantasy, terror and horror, horror and revulsion more by example than by definition. All of which is very well, but perhaps we ought to examine the emotion of horror a little more closely--not in terms of definition but in terms of effect. What does horror do? Why do people want to be horrified... why do they pay to be horrified? Why an Exorcist? A Jaws? An Alien? But before we talk about why people crave the effect, maybe we ought to spend a little time thinking about components--and if we do not choose to define horror itself, we can at least examine the elements and perhaps draw some conclusions from them.”

FearUnderstandingFantasyHuman NatureHorrorScience FictionTerrorStephen KingRevulsionDanse Macabre
Book:Danse Macabre
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“The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn’t last from one sticky shovelful to the next. Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed up my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into. ‘You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.’ In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shoved skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, ‘I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!’ The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, ‘You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.”

WarHorrorRevulsion
Book:With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
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“I had always believed that the very best food contains something elementally repugnant. That its innate grotesquerie is what makes it so perversely alluring. My own favorite foods tended toward a certain sludgy, muddy texture. And from the most expensive and genteel through to the indulgently crass, the appeal of slop abides: caviar, escargots, foie gras or hamburgers, kebabs, macaroni and cheese. Even vegetable soup forms a membrane. Apples begin rotting from the very first bite. No matter which end of the spectrum, there lies fundamentally and yet delectably disgusting, some squirmy, sinewy, oozing, greasy, sticky, glutinous, mushy, fatty, chewy, viscous thing that compels. The line between pleasure and revulsion can seem so very thin, if it even exists at all.”

Food For ThoughtGrotesqueRevulsionFine LineRepugnant
Book:Supper Club
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“When you love someone, you end up caring about each and every person they love. When you hate someone, you end up caring about every single person who hates them.”

LoveCareDesireHatePassionRelationshipsFamilyMarriageEnemyWifeRelationshipFriendsHusbandWorshipHatredDatingCaringLustDevotionIntimacyGirlfriendAttachmentWarmthContemptDislikeDespiseLoved OnesYearningWeddingTendernessFriendLoverSpouseInfatuationEnemiesRelationship AdviceAdorationBoyfriendLoathingPartnerLoatheEnmityDetestFondnessAnimosityAbominationArdorAbhorrenceSpousesDistasteWivesAntipathyEndearmentHusbandsGirlfriendsRevulsionBoyfriendsDisgustDeep AffectionIdolizationAbhorDotingExecrationNearest And DearestAbominateAversion HostilityBesottednessDetestationOdium
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“She merely wiped the floor with paper towels and said nothing, brushing her free hand against my shoulder blade—my shoulder blade!—as she carried the soaked paper to the trash can, never holding me fast, refraining not out of lack of humanity but out of fear of being drawn into a request for further tenderness, a request that could only bring her face-to-face with some central revulsion, a revulsion of her husband or herself or both, a revulsion that had come from nowhere, or from her, or perhaps from something I’d done or failed to do, who knew, she didn’t want to know, it was too great a disappointment, far better to get on with the chores, with the baby, with the work, far better to leave me to my own devices, as they say, to leave me to resign myself to certain motifs, to leave me to disappear guiltily into a hole of my own digging. When the time came to stop her from leaving, I did not know what to think or wish for, her husband who was now an abandoner, a hole-dweller, a leaver who had left her to fend for herself, as she said, who’d failed to provide her with the support and intimacy she needed, she complained, who was lacking some fundamental wherewithal, who no longer wanted her, who beneath his scrupulous marital motions was angry, whose sentiments had decayed into a mere sense of responsibility, a husband who, when she shouted, “I don’t need to be provided for! I’m a lawyer! I make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year! I need to be loved!” had silently picked up the baby and smelled the baby’s sweet hair, and had taken the baby for a crawl in the hotel corridor, and afterward washed the baby’s filthy hands and soft filthy knees, and thought about what his wife had said, and saw the truth in her words and an opening, and decided to make another attempt at kindness, and at nine o’clock, with the baby finally drowsy in his cot, came with a full heart back to his wife to find her asleep, as usual, and beyond waking. In short, I fought off the impulse to tell Rachel to go fuck herself.”

LoveHateMarriageRevulsion
Book:Netherland
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“The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.”

StillsMatterBodyCertainAnimalTeachCasesAirOvercomingFunctionImportanceRemainsTradePlantNobleInnocentExhaustedChemistAuschwitzRevulsionNitrogen
Book:The periodic table
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“[S]ervants of darkness had no lasting joy in their service. In all of them the will for darkness was a perversion of the will for the light. In all but a few maniacs the satisfaction of the will for darkness was at all times countered by a revulsion which the unhappy spirit either dared not confess even to itself, or else rejected as cowardly and evil.”

LightJoySpiritEvilDarknessSatisfactionUnhappyAll TimeLastingRejectedCowardlyPerversionManiacsRevulsion
Book:Darkness and the light
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“Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.”

StatesFormLiteratureLanguageSocialOrganizationInfiniteAncientReactionsInevitablePermanentIronyIndifferenceTemporaryFiniteRevulsionSocial Organization
Author:Joseph Brodsky
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“Boxing is an American sport - a 'so-called sport' to many - in which images of incalculable beauty and violence, desperation and ingenuity, are routinely entwined; the sport that evokes the most extreme reactions - loathing, revulsion, righteous indigation; a fierce and often inexplicable loyalty.”

SportsViolenceExtremesLoyaltyReactionsBoxingRighteousFierceDesperationIngenuityEvokeLoathingInexplicableEntwinedRevulsion
Book:(Woman) writer: occasions and opportunities
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“The zombie threat is made worse by the fact that their victims then turn into the creature that attacked them. This too is similar to other monsters (werewolves and vampires) and also similar to the sub-genre of infection/plague films. In the case of zombies, however, this may carry a greater sense of dread and revulsion: vampires and werewolves can be seen as desirable, potent, intelligent, virile creatures whom one might like -- in some way at least -- to become; a mindless ghoul condemned to wander aimlessly across an empty, ruined earth seems much less attractive.”

WayMayMadeFactsSeemsMightEarthFilmTurnsCasesGreaterCreaturesEmptyIntelligentVictimThreatMonstersWanderVampireGenreAttractiveDreadRuinedDesirableZombiePlagueWerewolfInfectionMindlessGhoulsRevulsion
Author:Kim Paffenroth
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“...after my first feeling of revulsion had passed, I spent three of the most entertaining and instructive weeks of my life studying the fascinating molds which appeared one by one on the slowly disintegrating mass of horse-dung. Microscopic molds are both very beautiful and absorbingly interesting. The rapid growth of their spores, the way they live on each other, the manner in which the different forms come and go, is so amazing and varied that I believe a man could spend his life and not exhaust the forms or problems contained in one plate of manure.”

MenWayFirstsBelieveDifferentFeelingsProblemBeautifulFormThreeI BelieveGrowthInterestingStudyWeekHe ManMassHorseFascinatingBiologyEntertainingPlatesRapidsComes And GoesMoldVery BeautifulManureRevulsionRapid Growth
Author:David Fairchild
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“Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.”

IfsThinkingWellsArtMomentsMightGroupsConditionsCenturyFiguresTasteGreekCompositionSculptureFragmentsVividAdaptedAntiquesRevulsionDelphi
Book:The nude: a study in ideal form
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“Consider the wave of revulsion that floods the average person when he or she hears of the practice of human sacrifice by the Aztecs and other so-called primitive peoples. How savage and barbaric such practices seem. But when a Christian or Jew comes across human sacrifice in the Bible (see Jephthah's immolation of his daughter in Judges 11:30-40), is he or she repulsed?”

HumansPersonsSeemsChristianReligiousPracticeSacrificeJudgingDaughterBibleAverageWaveJewPrimitiveFloodSavagesAverage PersonBarbaricRevulsion
Author:Steve Allen
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“We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.”

HumansIdeasSelfMatterFeelingsEasyAnimalMistakeFitBehaviorPerceptionConsciousNo IdeaAppropriateBeing HumanCriteriaSelf ConsciousInappropriateLizardsRevulsion
Author:Douglas Adams
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“But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done.”

IfsMenDoneCertainShapesSpringBlessedCheerProvisionCheerfulnessMercuryRevulsionTimes Like These
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
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“What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?”

IfsShouldBelieveMayDoneFacesPurposeFallAcceptingGenerationsObjectsHorrorShameGuiltSilentJewCompareDiscussionIncomparableExterminationRevulsionShame And Guilt
Book:The Reader
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“You belong to the biblical race of Nephilim. Your real father was an angel who fell from heaven. You're half mortal." The boy's dark eyes lifted, meeting Chauncey's. "Half fallen angel." Chauncey's tutor's voice drifted up from the recesses of his mind, reading passages from the Bible, telling of a deviant race created when angels cast from heaven mated with mortal women. A fearsome and powerful race. A chill that wasn't entirely revulsion crept through Chauncey. "Who are you?”

MindRealEyeReadingFatherHeavenVoiceDarkPowerfulRaceHalfBoysAngelMeetingsCastsMortalsFallenPassagesBiblicalChillFallen AngelsRecessTutorRevulsionDeviantsMind ReadingDark EyesNephilimReal Father
Book:Hush, Hush
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“Sometimes Thomas Mackee will stick an earphone into my ear and ask me to listen to a song. When I get over the revulsion of putting something in my ear that's been in his, I sit back and let the music take over, and for a half hour there's something comforting about someone's heart beating at the same rhythm as mine.”

HeartSometimesSongAsksHoursHalfMinesEarsSticksRhythmAsk MeGet OverComfortingHalf HoursRevulsionHeart Beating
Book:Saving Francesca
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“There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.”

RespectBreachDecorumRevulsion
Book:THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer
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“It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self-created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it.”

MindBelieveSelfMatterWisdomSpiritualUsedGoalEffortBreakSlaveryPainfulUnhappyChainsLiberationDawnAttachmentRebelMake You HappyAcquisitionIdentificationRevulsion
Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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