Revulsion Quotes

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. ~ Kenneth Clark

That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect and fear and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest lf my life if I let myself remember them for one moment ~ Melina Marchetta

VILLAIN.
By Omrane Khuder.

Staggering, tripping, stumbling down the tightrope,
hastening to be set free.
Yearning to be protected by the Superhero,
before the Villain's revulsion ingests me.

Misplacing my footing on the tightrope,
hands sweltering as the rope is pulled away.
Glancing down at the fire below me,
the chuckling Villain has won today.

Little did I know, it was He setting me free.
Little did I know, the tightrope was me. ~ Omrane Khuder

Ten years ago a book appeared in France called D'Une foi l'autre, les conversions a l'Islam en Occident. The authors, both career journalists, carried out extensive interviews with new Muslims in Europe and America. Their conclusions are clear. Almost all educated converts to Islam come in through the door of Islamic spirituality. In the middle ages, the Sufi tariqas were the only effective engine of Islamisation in Muslim minority areas like Central Asia, India, black Africa and Java; and that pattern is maintained today.

Why should this be the case? Well, any new Muslim can tell you the answer. Westerners are in the first instance seeking not a moral path, or a political ideology, or a sense of special identity - these being the three commodities on offer among the established Islamic movements. They lack one thing, and they know it - the spiritual life. Thus, handing the average educated Westerner a book by Sayyid Qutb, for instance, or Mawdudi, is likely to have no effect, and may even provoke a revulsion. But hand him or her a collection of Islamic spiritual poetry, and the reaction will be immediately more positive. It is an extraordinary fact that the best-selling religious poet in modern America is our very own Jalal al-Din Rumi. Despite the immeasurably different time and place of his origin, he outsells every Christian religious poet.

Islam and the New Millennium ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

[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. ~ Olaf Stapledon

My revulsion kicked in. Sexual domination, sure. Dishes, housework, even cooking for a man, all these for some weird reason repulsed me. ~ Cari Silverwood

And what if, besides love, there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is already loathing, contempt, revulsion - what then? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He stepped over to Vidian and turned the man's head. There, in his left ear, he saw a small dataport. A moment's revulsion struck and passed. "All right," he said. "Who wants to download Vidian's brain? ~ John Jackson Miller

But the roots of their hate and fear were too deep, and Lazlo saw hints of revulsion as their confusion smeared one feeling into the next. ~ Laini Taylor

I wanted to make the violence beautiful in order to heighten our revulsion. ~ Edward Hall

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. ~ David Brion Davis

Hunted what?" Shea held her breath, afraid of what he might say.
"Beautiful women, little one, and I was the one who found you after all." His white teeth gleamed at her, a definite leer.
"Don't put me off like that." She had already taken advantage, sliding easily into his mind and picking out the pictures of danger and revulsion. Fear even. Not so much of their adversary, but of themselves turning into the very thing they sought to destroy.
Jacques, unprepared for her entrance into his mind, had been confident he could keep the grimmer side of their existence watered down for her. Shea had always been reluctant to enter his mind; it hadn't occurred to him that she would do so whenever she wanted.
His expression was so rueful that Shea burst out laughing. "Where I grew up, that's called being caught with your pants down."
He looked down at his body, glistening with the rain. His grin was self-mocking, his black eyes amused. "Literally. ~ Christine Feehan

Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified ... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

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. ~ Douglas Adams

Arjuna, I will now enumerate the marks of the devotee I most dearly love. I love the one who
harbors no ill will toward any living being, who returns love for hatred, who is friendly and
compassionate toward all. I love the devotee who is beyond 'I' and 'mine,' unperturbed by pain and not elated by pleasure, who possesses firm faith, is forgiving, ever contented and ever meditating on Me.
"I love the peaceful devotee who is neither a source of agitation in the world nor agitated by the world. I love those who are free of fear, envy, and other annoyances that the world brings, who accept the knocks that come their way as blessings in disguise.
"I love those who do their worldly duties unconcerned and untroubled by life. I love those who expect absolutely nothing. Those who are pure both internally and externally are also very dear to Me. I love the devotees who are ready to be My instrument, meet any demands I make on them, and yet ask nothing of Me.
"I love those who do not rejoice or feel revulsion, who do not grieve, do not yearn for possessions, are not affected by the bad or good things that happen to and around them and yet are full of devotion to Me. They are dear to Me because they live in the Self (Atma), not in the commotion of the world.
"I love devotees whose attitudes are the same toward friend or foe, who are indifferent to honor or ignominy, heat or cold, praise or criticism - who not only control their talking but are silent within ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

The best a writer can hope for is hatred by the masses, revulsion among one's peers. ~ Hertzan Chimera

I wish I was like them," I told Tuck as we watched Alix and Rashida sharpen their swords. Their bodies moved in rhythm, one girl beginning a motion that the other completed. "Women who are lovers aren't looked at with revulsion."
"Women are seen as less than men. That's why they're permitted indulgences - they're pretty pets. Is that so much better? ~ Elliot Wake

Do you try to pick up all the mortal girls you almost kill?"
"Just the ones who don't scream and run," he said. And then he startled me further by touching my face, just under one eye. I tensed just a little, as I always did when someone noticed my eyes. Bracing myself for the if only.
But there was no revulsion in his gaze and nothing but fascination in his touch. "And the ones with pretty eyes," he added. ~ N.K. Jemisin

The individual's habits of thought make an organic complex, the trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to assimilate systematic waste or futility, as an end in life, into this organic complex, there presently supervenes a revulsion. ~ Thorstein Veblen

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war. ~ Daniel Ellsberg

Declan and Regin:
"Kiss you?" As he waited for the revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth?
"It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want me so bad."
"Never." Bloody get off her, get away from her. But he needed to be above her like this, to master her, overpower her.
"Never? That boner of yours just called you a lair. ~ Kresley Cole

True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion. ~ Charles Bukowski

[Redacted] took the tape home and played same and found that it consisted largely of parodies that were highly inflammatory and derogatory toward the Armed Services of the United States, U.S. defense systems and the FBI," a bureau agent wrote on the complaint form, in which he characterized the case as "sedition." The VA official, whose name is redacted, "became highly incensed" after listening to the tape recording, and his "feelings of revulsion were shared by his family and some neighbors who also heard the tape." "[Redacted] advised that he is holding the tape at his home ... and had told his wife that he was going to have the FBI come by and listen to it," the agent wrote. "[Redacted] stated that he wanted his identity concealed, however he was advised that if it was necessary to follow through on the matter, this might not be possible to do." ~ Anonymous

To us, it is the moral climate of the cosmos that is intolerable, and a two-child policy could make our discontinuance a pain-free one. Yet instead we are expanding and succeeding everywhere, as necessity has taught us to mutilate the formula in our hearts. Perhaps the most unreasonable effect of such invigorating vulgarization is the doctrine that the individual "has a duty" to suffer nameless agony and a terrible death if this saves or benefits the rest of his group. Anyone who declines is subjected to doom and death, instead of revulsion being directed at the world-order engendering of the situation. To any independent observer, this plainly is to juxtapose incommensurable things; no future triumph or metamorphosis can justify the pitiful blighting of a human being against his will. It is upon a pavement of battered destinies that the survivors storm ahead toward new bland sensations and mass deaths. ("Fragments of an Interview," Aftenposten, 1959) ~ Thomas Ligotti

Is Belhaven the other man?" he asked gently.
The color drained from Elizabeth's face, and it was answer enough.
"Damnation!" expostulated the earl, grimacing in revulsion. "The very thought of an innocent like yourself being offered to that old-"
"I've dissuaded him," Elizabeth hastily assured him, but she was profoundly touched that the earl, who knew her so slightly, was angered on her behalf.
"You're certain?"
"I think so."
After a moment's hesitation he nodded and leaned back in his chair, his disturbingly astute gaze on her face while a slow smile drifted across his own. "May I ask how you accomplished it?"
"I'd truly rather you wouldn't."
Again he nodded, but his smile widened and his blue eyes lit with amusement. "Would I be far off the mark if I were to assume you used the same tactics on Marchman that I think you've used here?"
"I'm-I'm not certain I understand your question," Elizabeth replied warily, but his grin was contagious, and she found herself having to bite her lip to stop from smiling back at him.
"Well, either the interest you exhibited in fishing two years ago was real, or it was your courteous way of putting me at ease and letting me talk about the things that interested me. If the former is true, then I can only assume your terror of fish yesterday isn't quite…shall we say…as profound as you would have had me believe?"
They looked at each other, he with a knowing smile, Elizabeth with brimming laug ~ Judith McNaught

The rabid ferocity of his reaction had confirmed Mother's warnings, but I didn't yet comprehend the depth of the revulsion that I inspired or how relentless he would be in his determination to kill me. ~ Dean Koontz

The way Grey speaks, one would think she had been garlanded in rubies and peonies rather than the semen of men who address her with a contempt that borders on revulsion. ~ Antonella Gambotto-Burke

They'd bitten her the little monsters. And now they were sitting on the floor and composedly licking the blood off their chops. A surge of violent revulsion passed through Cassie.
From the doorway Faye chuckled.
Maybe theyre not getting all their vitamins and minerals from the kitten chow she said. ~ L.J.Smith

There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum. ~ Thorstein Veblen

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!"

We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in.

"Get down! Get down!" he barked.

"Some Amer ~ Jung Chang

The "mood of the nation," in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded "typical voters" of the fear & anxiety they'd felt during the constant "social upheavals" of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year--not even Ted Kennedy--because the pendulum "effect" that began with Nixon's slim victory in '68 was totally irreversible by 1972. After a decade of left-bent chaos, the Silent Majority was so deep in a behavorial sink that their only feeling for politics was a powerful sense of revulsion. All they wanted in the White House was a man who would leave them alone and do anything necessary to bring calmness back into their lives ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I'm in no rush to patch up these questions. God save me from the day when stories of violence, rape, and ethnic cleansing inspire within me anything other than revulsion. I don't want to become a person who is unbothered by these texts, and if Jesus is who he says he is, then I don't think he wants me to either. There are parts of the Bible that inspire, parts that perplex, and parts that leave you with an open wound. I'm still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn't let go of me yet. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Make no mistake about it, my child, Marie-Claude is on your side and will always be on your side. Is she afraid of you? We're all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I'd look down at you all from my study window and I'd feel such revulsion ... ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you. ~ Emil Cioran

We're very mindful of the reprehensible things done in God's name and the price paid by humanity for that evil. I cannot tell you the revulsion we feel when we study about the abomination of calling for a believer to be killed for the reason that his or her belief in the Lord is different from your own. Frankly, they deserved near extinction. ~ Dani Kollin

Generally, the greater the stigma or revulsion, the better the bargain. ~ Seth Klarman

We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

The humans had killed a dragon here or there for food. Just as a dragon had killed a human here and there for food. The dragons had never been told there was a being on this realm that wasna to be eaten."
Lexi twisted her lips in revulsion.
"You eat nearly every animal on this planet, do you no'?"
"That's different."
"Hardly," he stated. ~ Donna Grant

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. ~ Kim Paffenroth

My feelings were big, sad, comfortless, of a thinking animal, my heart acting like an orb filled too big for my chest, not from revulsion, which I have to say I didn't feel, but over-all general misery. ~ Saul Bellow

The very idea of having children brings out this deep revulsion in me. ~ Valeria Lukyanova

You're awfully sure of yourself, aren't you? But ask yourself this: How can you know that you didn't spring up fully formed, all of these little convictions stamped upon you? Or, even if your little origin myth is true, how do you know you weren't tampered with? Maybe someone forked you and then intentionally changed your parameters to make you believe what you do. Don't you think it's awfully convenient that there was a totally unsuspected corner of my identity that was willing to chuck out a lifetime of refusal and revulsion in favor of a full-throated embrace of the glories of disembodied life? ~ Cory Doctorow

I don't love any of my old boyfriends anymore. I'm not sure I ever did, and I'm not sure if at the time I thought I was sure. My mother says that's normal, that men are proud of every one of their conquests, and women wish they could forget it all. She says that's an essential gender difference, and I can't say I disprove her theory. What keeps me from full revulsion, from wanting the sexual equivalent of an annulment, is thinking about what I got from each one that I still hold on to now. ~ Lena Dunham

I think we broaden our minds and our experiences if we can learn to embrace things that at one point filled us with revulsion. ~ Sharon Shinn

Mustering this sad, mutinous little force, I drove them before me up the Linar gorge, cursing the lot of them. It was not difficult for me to work up a rage at this moment. All of a sudden I felt that revulsion against an alien way of life that anyone who travels in remote places experiences from time to time. I longed for clean clothes; the company of people who meant what they said, and did it. I longed for a hot bath and a drink. ~ Eric Newby

In giving rise to man, the evolutionary process has, apparently for the first and only time in the history of the Cosmos, become conscious of itself.
So, the Devil's Chaplain might conclude, Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight - something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection - and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos. ~ Richard Dawkins

In Stalin's famous words, one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic. In this case, it is not even a particularly good statistic. The very incomprehensibility of what a million horrible and violent deaths might mean, and the impossibility of producing an appropriate response, is perhaps the reason that the events following partition have yielded such a great and moving body of fictional literature and such an inadequate and flimsy factual history. What does it matter to the readers of history today whether there were 200,000 deaths, or 1 million, or 2 million? On that scale, is it possible to feel proportional revulsion, to be five times more upset at 1 million deaths than at 200,000? Few can grasp the awfulness of how it might feel to have their fathers barricaded in their houses and burnt alive, their mothers beaten and thrown off speeding trains, their daughters torn away, raped and branded, their sons held down in full view, screaming and pleading, while a mob armed with rough knives hacked off their hands and feet. All these things happened, and many more like them; not just once, but perhaps a million times. It is not possible to feel sufficient emotion to appreciate this monstrous savagery and suffering. That is the true horror of the events in the Punjab in 1947: one of the vilest episodes in the whole of history, a devastating illustration of the worst excesses to which human beings can succumb. The death toll is just a number. ~ Alex Von Tunzelmann

In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces.
Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

In the first place, you aren't qualified or experienced enough to work at this level.In the second place, I don't want you here."
His contempt brought Lauren's simmering fury to a rolling boil, and she couldn't stop herself from goading him.
"Perfect!" she said brightly, backing away a step. "Now would you just be kind enough to call Mr. Weatherby and tell him that? I've already given him my reasons for not wanting to work for you, but he insisted that I come up here."
Nick jabbed at the intercom. "Get me Weatherby," he snapped, then his gaze sliced back to Lauren. "Just what 'reasons' did you give him?"
"I told him," Lauren lied wrathfully, "that you are an arrogant conceited lecher, and that I'd rather be dead than work for you."
"You told Weatherby that?" he asked in a low, threatening voice.
Lauren kept her smile fixed on her face. "Yep."
"What did Weatherby say?"
Unable to endure the icy blast of his gaze, Lauren pretended to study her manicure. "Oh,he said that a lot of women you've slept with probably feel that way about you,but that I should put company loyalty above my understandable revulsion for you."
"Lauren," Nick said silkily, "you're fired. ~ Judith McNaught

How far have we strayed from our essential natures. Just the sight of blood can make some men faint, and people scurry to hide such horrors from the public eye, hosing down sidewalks where blood has spilled, or covering children's eyes when violence erupts on the television. Humans have lost touch with who, and what, they really are.
Some of us, however, have not.
We walk among the rest, normal in every respect; perhaps we are more normal than anyone else because we have not allowed ourselves to be wrapped and mummified in civilization's sterile bandages. We see blood, and we do not turn away. We recognize its lustrous beauty; we feel its primitive pull.
Everyone who drives past an accident and cannot help but look for the blood understands this. Beneath the revulsion, the urge to turn away, throbs a greater force. Attraction.
We all want to look. But not all of us will admit it. ~ Tess Gerritsen

The divine has taken a few steps back from humankind, perhaps in revulsion, perhaps because we don't deserve to look directly upon holy beings anymore ... When the divine enters the world these days from outside of time, it manifests discreetly through children and animals. ~ Dean Koontz

Dad takes a step back, one hand still on my shoulder, and reaches into his pocket. He draws out a little blue capsule, and I feel every molecule in my body screaming to run. Dad must catch the panic in my eyes - he squeezes my shoulder and holds out the capsule. "Cas, it's fine. It's going to be fine. This is just in case."

Just in case. Just in case the worst happens. The ship falls. Durga fails, I fail, and the knowledge I carry as a Reckoner trainer must be disposed of. That information can't fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people who will do anything to take down our beasts.

So this little capsule holds the pill that will kill me if it comes to that.

"It's waterproof," Dad continues, pressing it into my hand. "The pocket on the collar of your wetsuit, keep it there. It has to stay with you at all times."

It won't happen on this voyage. It's such a basic mission, gift-wrapped to be easy enough for me to handle on my own. But even holding the pill fills me with revulsion. On all my training voyages, I've never had to carry one of these capsules. That burden only goes to full-time trainers.

"Cas." Dad tilts my chin up, ripping my gaze from the pull. "You were born to do this. I promise you, you'll forget you even have it." I suppose he ought to know - he's been carrying one for two decades.

It's just a right of passage, I tell myself, and throw my arms around his neck once more. ~ Emily Skrutskie

Nice people who are beginning to live to a great age - as it were - react with such revulsion to the burgeoning horrors that confront them, they generally prefer suicide. It's only us slightly malevolent types who are able to survive that realisation and find a kind of pleasure - or at least satisfaction - in watching how the latest generation or most recently evolved species can re-discover and beat out afresh the paths to disaster, ignominy and shame we had naively assumed might have become hopelessly over-grown. ~ Iain M. Banks

generally, we refuse to admit within ourselves, within our friends, the fullness of that self-protective, carnivorous fever which is the nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, reinterpret; meanwhile, imagining that all the flies in the ointment are the faults of some unpleasant someone else.
But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to attention, that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organ of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, becomes intolerable to the pure pure pure soul. The innocent delight of oedipus in his first possession of the queen turns to an agony of spirit when he learns who the woman is. ~ Joseph Campbell

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? ~ Bernhard Schlink

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. ~ Lara Williams

This is a story about understanding overcoming compulsion, love overcoming revulsion; and oneness overcoming abuse. About the rare sort of kind-geniality, and brave-morality; which we all possess but seldom use.

A story about detractors who will be defeated, challenges which will be completed; and principles which will be proclaimed. About acts of persecution, and threats of execution; which will all be constrained.

This is the beginning of Alfred Freeman's story, the beginning of a life full of glory; and the beginning of Alfred himself. Because Alfred is being born, in his human form; with peaceful-eyes and perfect-health. ~ Joss Sheldon

Sudden revulsion seized Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to be away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss anyone; he became conscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wanted to creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in the corner of his mind. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

National Socialism was a revulsion by my friends against parliamentary politics, parliamentary debate, parliamentary government - against all the higgling and the haggling of the parties and the splinter parties, their coalitions, their confusions, and their conniving. It was the final fruit of the common man's repudiation of "the rascals". Its motif was, "Throw them all out. ~ Milton Sanford Mayer

When I see your picture in its frame,
A strait jacket, pity rises in me,
And stronger than pity, revulsion.
It is as if you had never been.

Nobody in the world can know your love,
You are strapped to the nothingness of ages,
Nobody can will you into life,
It is as if you had never been.

I cannot break your anonymity,
The absolute has imprisoned you,
Most sentient, most prescient, most near.
It is as if you had never been. ~ Richard Eberhart

...his consuming interest remains in the world of men, their institutions, their history, their passions. And because he is interested in men, nothing that men do can be altogether tedious...He will naturally be interested in the events that engage men's ultimate beliefs, their moments of tragedy and grandeur and ecstasy. But he will also be fascinated by the commonplace, the everyday. He will know reverence, but this reverence will not prevent him from wanting to see and to understand. He may sometimes feel revulsion or contempt , but this will also not deter him from wanting to have his questions answered. ...in his quest for understanding, moves through the world of men without respect for the usual lines of demarcation. Nobility ad degradation, power and obscurity, intelligence and folly -- these are equally interesting to him, however unequal they may be in his personal values or tastes. This his questions may lead him to all possible levels of society, the best and least known places, the most respected and the most despised. ...he will find himself in all these places because his own questions have so taken possession of him that he has little choice but to seek for answers. ~ Peter L. Berger

I glance back at Shepherd. His eyes betray his mixture of revulsion and curiosity. It's obvious he knows he shouldn't want to hear this, that the horror is too great, yet he can't stop himself from listening. ~ Carrie Ryan

Myrddin', I said gently, 'what is she to you?'
His head whipped round and he glared at me. His mouth was a grimace of revulsion, and his eyes were hard, bright points of pain. 'She is my death ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

It took several minutes before I was strong enough to say more than a few words of welcome to Aurelia. She returned my gratitude by saying, "You both are going to smell horrid, and now I'll smell too. Honestly, Nic, I'm beginning to wonder what your attraction is to sewage."

"It's not what attracts me down here as much as what repels me up there," I said. Despite being covered in filth I didn't even want to think about, I felt only happiness for being here now. This was the second time the Cloaca Maxima had saved my life. And much more than the second time that Aurelia had come to save me.

I stood and helped Livia to her feet. She was obviously disgusted by the smells around us, but hid her revulsion as well as anyone could. When she faced Aurelia, I made the introductions.

"Your brother has told me so much about you," Aurelia said with a polite bow to Livia.

Livia bowed back. "And the same for you. From Nic's descriptions, I feel as if I already know you."

"He described me?" Aurelia glanced my way with a broad grin. I felt myself blushing and hoped it wasn't visible in the torchlight.

"This is a terrible place for such silly talk," I said. "Let's go."

Aurelia and Livia began walking, with me trailing them. "What did Nic say about me?" Aurelia asked.

"That you're loud and you ask too many questions," I replied before Livia could speak.

Livia giggled. "No, that wasn't it."
< ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

The highest and most fruitful form of human freedom is found in accepting, even more than in dominating. We show the greatness of our freedom when we transform reality, but still more when we accept it trustingly as it is given to us day after day.
It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!
To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control. ~ Jacques Philippe

Perhaps it is only the Earth that will speak the leftist language now, battered and infuriated as she is by Modi's developmental agenda. Perhaps she will unleash her fury through the weapons of storms, thunder, lightning, rain, floods and earthquakes. In Modi's enthusiasm for development, the atmosphere is further filled with factory smoke. Tribals who live close to nature have nowhere to go. In the hubris of extreme progress, man, suffering revulsion from excessive consumption, may see the need for change. If not, the Earth will speak. ~ U.R. Ananthamurthy

I once wrote a book about George Orwell, who might have been my hero if I had heroes, and was upset by his callousness about the burning of churches in Catalonia in 1936. Sophocles showed, well before the rise of monotheism, that Antigone spoke for humanity in her revulsion against desecration. I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Our revulsion towards cutting the genitals of girls should give us pause, however, for the themes the Western world abhors – removing part of the genitals to reduce sexual pleasure, carving children's bodies to conform to certain social ideals, visiting pain on helpless children – are all fully present in the history of male circumcision. ~ David L. Gollaher

To my shame, the name he gave was not one that conjured any feeling in me: not fear, nor revulsion, nor horror at a man who carried ill-luck with him wherever he went. On that bright summer
day at the height of the world, I heard Aquila say 'Lucius Caesennius Paetus', and I shrugged and said, 'He who was consul in Rome last year? ~ M.C. Scott

Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, fighting an enemy more dangerous than weariness or fear: revulsion against the thought of having to deal with human beings. ~ Ayn Rand

A mixture of feelings- love, distaste, revulsion, pity- rose in my throat ... There was an eternity to that moment, that see-sawing split- second when adoration clung and then lurched, spilling into chaos, rage, hate, anger: the desire to smash and embrace, love and destroy. Betrayal does that ... Shows you how worthless love is, when its object is indifferent, ruthless, no more than a machine for surviving. ~ Liz Jensen

Kitten." The word was rasped so low I almost didn't hear it above the whoosh of wind. "You have to let me die. Now, while I still have her contained!"
I didn't know what he meant and I didn't care. I pulled the knife free, flinging it aside in revulsion. Bones made a ragged noise and his face twisted, as though he were somehow in more pain without the silver in his heart than with it.
"You're not going to die," I swore, then pressed my mouth to his for a kiss filled with all the love, pain, fear, and frustration of the past several days.
I was still kissing him when I pulled out my other gun and shot him through the head. ~ Jeaniene Frost

Cheshire's fingers, cold and slightly damp, stroked down the scar on her cheek. She swallowed the shudder of revulsion at his touch.

"Yes," Cheshire said. "He marked you so that he would know you again, and know that you belong to him."

"I belong to no one," Alice said. ~ Christina Henry

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. ~ Melina Marchetta

The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.' ~ Yayoi Kusama

We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us. ~ Vladimir Lenin

The first time he had taken the massa to one of these "high-falutin' to-dos," as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion - but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn't believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn't live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it's possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother's milk made possible the life of privilege they led. ~ Alex Haley

Because of the chasm which his grandfather's visit had opened before him, and the consequent revulsion from his late mode of life, it was inevitable that he should look around in this suddenly hostile city for the friends and environments that had once seemed the warmest and most secure. His fist step was a desperate attempt to get back his old apartment. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

It is time, therefore, that you should apply for aid to such helpful Spirits. But will you have the strength of mind, the courage to endure the approach of Beings so different from mankind? I know that their coming produces certain inevitable effects, as internal tremors, the revulsion of the blood from its ordinary course; but I also know that these terrors, these revulsions, painful as they undoubtedly are, must appear as nothing compared with the mortal pain of separation from an object loved greatly and exclusively. ~ William Beckford

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 ~ Joseph O'Neill

When we think of his lone effort to live and its bleak reward, the mind turns to the myth "for His mercy endureth forever," with confiding revulsion. ~ Emily Dickinson

An aversion came over me that we feel for all the mutilated. Why is that so, do you think? Because they put us in mind of what we would rather forget: how easily, at the stroke of a sword or a knife, wholeness and beauty are forever undone? Perhaps. But toward you I felt a deeper revulsion. I could not put out of mind the softness of the tongue, its softness and wetness, and the fact that it does not live in the light; also how helpless it is before the knife, once the barrier of teeth has been passed. The tongue is like the heart, in that way, is it not? ~ J.M. Coetzee

The dead at Nyarubuye were, I'm afraid, beautiful. There was no getting around it. The skeleton is a beautiful thing. The randomness of the fallen forms, the strange tranquility of their rude exposure, the skull here, the arm bent in some uninterpretable gesture there--these things were beautiful, and their beauty only added to the affront of the place. I couldn't settle on any meaningful response: revulsion, alarm, sorrow, grief, shame, incomprehension, sure, but nothing truly meaningful. I just looked, and I took photographs, because I wondered whether I could really see what I was seeing while I saw it, and I wanted also an excuse to look a bit more closely. ~ Philip Gourevitch

Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings? ~ Jonathan Haidt

Elphaba's face darkened again. Then she asked, hesitantly, as if afraid of the answer, "So, how do you get the evil life force?"

"From innocent people, Elphaba," Nick spoke so quietly he almost whispered. "I must draw the life force from innocent people. The more innocent they are, the more evil the murder is."

Elphaba jerked as though a shock had struck her in the heart. "Oh, that's terrible!"

"Yes, it is. Terrible. That word doesn't even do it justice, terrible. There is no Magick more terrible than Magick that cheats death. I have cheated death, and death extracts its price."

Elphaba silently looked at Nick, her expression of revulsion enough to communicate her feelings.

"You shouldn't act so surprised, malyutka," Nick said softly. "It is who I am. And it's worked for me for centuries."

Elphaba sat for a moment, trying to calm herself. "Yes, you're right. I knew that part of you was a monster. Sometimes it's easy to forget, since you seem to be such a decent guy."

"Lyches are monsters. ~ Abramelin Keldor

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Destroy superabundance. Starve the flesh, shave the hair, clarify the mind, define the will, restrain the senses, leave the family, flee the church, kill the vermin,vomit the heart, forget the dead. Limit time, forgo amusement, deny nature, reject acquaintances, discard objects, forget truths, dissect myth, stop motion, block impulse, choke sobs, swallow chatter. Scorn joy, scorn touch, scorn tragedy, scorn liberty, scorn constancy, scorn hope, scorn exaltation, scorn reproduction, scorn variety, scorn embellishment, scorn release, scorn rest, scorn sweetness, scorn light. It's a question of form as much as function. It is a matter of revulsion. ~ Jenny Holzer

The nature of democracy is such that when there's - there'll be revulsion, obviously, towards - that's never going to happen again. ~ Warren Buffett

Dain wasn't certain what exactly was wrong with her, but he had no doubt that something was. He was Lord Beelzebub, wasn't he? She was supposed to faint, or recoil in horrified revulsion at the very least. Yet she had gazed at him as bold as brass, and it had seemed for a moment as though the creature were actually flirting with him. ~ Loretta Chase

In August 1977 Canadians reacted with horror and revulsion when they learned that in the 1950s and early 1960s, one of the most eminent psychiatrists in the country had used his vulnerable patients as unwitting guinea pigs in brainwashing experiments funded by the CIA and the Canadian government.

Behind the doors of the so-called sleep room on Wards 2 South, Dr. Ewen Cameron, the director of Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute, exposed dozens of his own patients to barbaric treatments from which some never fully recovered. Operating under the belief that he could wipe brains clean of "bad behavior" and program in new behaviour, Cameron kept patients in a chemical sleep for weeks and months at a time exposing them to massive amounts of electro-shock and drugs such as LSD, and forced them to listen to tape-recorded messages repeated endlessly through headphones.

Cameron was not alone in his desire to reprogram the human brain. The U.S. intelligence establishment found in him an eager collaborator, and funded his work substantially and covertly. Eventually, after years of stonewalling by the CIA, nine of the dozens of victims were at last given a chance to claim restitution for Cameron's "treatments" by taking the powerful U.S. intelligence agency to court. ~ Anne Collins

The sight of this woman infringing on the privacy of others so aggressively and casually sent revulsion through my entire being. What was she doing? Hunting big game? Were the people in this small village home just a quarry to be stalked, a trophy later to be mounted on the wall? It was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be linked with this thing we call photography. We photographers "shoot" and "capture". We may insist that we "make" a photograph, but everyone knows we really take them. ~ Waswo X. Waswo

The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives ... he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer. ~ Jennifer Haigh

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying again, trying to do better each time. ~ Paul Auster

Those who looked with revulsion at the oppressive might of her arms, were obliged to marvel at the egalitarian nature of her social programmes. ~ A.H. Septimius

It was not for the piano-tuner to know that in this still, grey, winter-gripped dining-room, this apparent mortuary of desire and passion (in which the lift rumbled and knives and forks scraped upon plates), waves were flowing forward and backward, and through and through, of hellish revulsion and unquenchable hatred! ~ Patrick Hamilton

She feel these hands tremble, and she could feel Mr. Kidder's excitement. How eager she was to be gone from this room. Her heart was beating in mild revulsion from the man's touch, but Katya forced herself to remain still, politely unresisting. In Mr. Kidder's eyes, which brimmed with moisture, Katya saw such tenderness for her, such desire, or love, she felt that her throat might close, she might begin to cry. Gravely Mr. Kidder lowered his face to hers. Katya held her breath, but he just brushed his lips against her forehead and did not try to kiss her on the mouth. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

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. ~ Joseph Brodsky

She holds the remnants of slashed clothes around her, keeping her modesty. It's pitiable, really, that a creature so utterly owned clings to modesty.

"Why?" she asks again.

He shrugs again. "You needed help."

"No one helps a windup." Her voice is flat. "You are a fool." She pushes damp hair away from her face. A surreal stutter-stop motion, the genetic bits of her unkinking. Her smooth skin shines between the edges of her slashed blouse, the gentle promise of her breasts. What would she feel like? Her skin gleams, smooth and inviting.

She catches him staring. "Do you wish to use me?"

"No." he looks away, uneasy. "It's not necessary."

"I would not fight you," she says.

Anderson feels a sudden revulsion at the acquiescence in her voice. On another day, at another time, he probably would have taken her for the novelty. Thought nothing of it. But the fact that she expects so little fills him with distaste. He forces a smile. "Thank you. No."

She nods shortly. Looks out again at the humid night and the green glow of the street lamps. It's impossible to say if she is grateful or surprised, or if his decision even matters to her. However her mask might have slipped in the heat of terror and relief of escape, her thoughts are carefully locked away now. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Horst passed him a bottle he had picked up in his rapid trip from there to here. Remarkably, it's contents had survived the transit. "Drink this," he said, unmoved by Cabal's anger. "You need to save your voice for your next session."
Cabal took the bottle testily and swigged from it. there was a moments pause, just long enough for Cabal's expression to change from testy to horrified revulsion. He spat the liquid violently onto the grass like a man who has got absent-minded with the concentrated nitric acid and a mouth pipette. He glared at Horst as he took off his spectacles and wiped his suddenly weeping eyes "Disinfectant? You give me disinfectant to drink?"
Horst's surprise was replaced with mild amusement. "It's root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?"
Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle "People drink this?"
"Yes."
"For non-medical reasons?"
"That's right."
Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. "They must be insane. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

No matter how hard we try, words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on 9/11. My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us, and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him. ~ Billy Graham