Vermin Quotes

These people all woke up this morning and reminded themselves to be human beings. Not everyone knows how to do that. No vermin, my people. Real human beings. ~ Jami Attenberg

Discovering a note in the mending basket, Phoebe plucked it out and unfolded it. She instantly recognized West's handwriting.

Unemployed Feline Seeking Household Position


To Whom It May Concern,
I hereby offer my services as an experienced mouser and personal companion. References from a reputable family to be provided upon request. Willing to accept room and board in lieu of pay. Indoor lodgings preferred.

Your servant,
Galoshes the Cat

Glancing up from the note, Phoebe found her parents' questioning gazes on her. "Job application," she explained sourly. "From the cat."
"How charming," Seraphina exclaimed, reading over her shoulder.
"'Personal companion,' my foot," Phoebe muttered. "This is a semi-feral animal who has lived in outbuildings and fed on vermin."
"I wonder," Seraphina said thoughtfully. "If she were truly feral, she wouldn't want any contact with humans. With time and patience, she might become domesticated."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "It seems we'll find out."
The boys returned from the dining car with a bowl of water and a tray of refreshments. Galoshes descended to the floor long enough to devour a boiled egg, an anchovy canapé, and a spoonful of black caviar from a silver dish on ice. Licking her lips and purring, the cat jumped back into Phoebe's lap and curled up with a sigh.
"I'd say she's adjusting quite well," Seraphina commented with a grin, and elbowed Phoebe ge ~ Lisa Kleypas

In his fitful eastward progress through Belgium and Germany that winter, my grandfather had shared all manner of billets: with dogfaces and officers, in misery and in comfort, in attack and in retreat, and pinned down by snow or German ordnance. He had bedded down under a bearskin in a schloss and in foxholes flecked pink with the tissue of previous occupants. If an hour's sleep were to be had, he seized it, in the bedrooms or basements of elegant townhouses, in ravaged hotels, on clean straw and straw that crawled with vermin, on featherbeds and canvas webbing slung across the bed of a half-truck, on mud, sandbags, and raw pine planks. However wretched, accommodations were always better or no worse than those on the enemy side. ~ Michael Chabon

We all belong to the nasty stinking little human race, & of course it is not nice for God's beloved vermin to scoff at each other ... Oh, we are a nasty little lot-& to think there are people who would like to save us & continue us. It won't happen if I have any influence. ~ Mark Twain

Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city. ~ Evo Morales

AS GREGOR SAMSA AWOKE from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. ~ Anonymous

VLADIMIR: Moron!
ESTRAGON: Vermin!
VLADIMIR: Abortion!
ESTRAGON: Morpion!
VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!
ESTRAGON: Curate!
VLADIMIR: Cretin!
ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!
VLADIMIR: Oh!
He wilts, vanquished, and turns away. ~ Samuel Beckett

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. ~ Aneurin Bevan

Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. From you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge. 'Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die. ~ Steven Erikson

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth. ~ Jonathan Swift

Michael Savage (the pseudonym of Michael Alan Weiner) is another popular radio host whose syndicated radio program is followed by 8 to 10 million listeners. Like Limbaugh, Savage derided the detainees as "subhuman" and "vermin," and suggested that forcible conversion to Christianity is "probably the only thing that can turn them into human beings. ~ David Livingstone Smith

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts. ~ Olaf Stapledon

I live in a constituency that is quite rural, there are some very successful hunts there that are abiding by the law as it stands now but who are very often pointing out to me the consequences of the need to exterminate vermin, which foxes are, and the consequences of trying to shoot them and winging them and so on. ~ Andrea Leadsom

The organizer of industry who thinks he has 'made' himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order - a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin. ~ Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

Mathic architects were helpless when it came to walls. Pillars they could do. Arches they were fine with. Vaults, which were just three-dimensional arches, they knew everything about. But ask them to construct a simple wall and they would go to pieces. Where anyone else in the world would construct a wall, they'd fill in the space with a system of arches and tracery. When people complained about wind, vermin, and other things that would be kept out of a normal building by walls, they might be troubled to fill up a vacancy with a stained-glass window. But we hadn't got round to putting all of those in yet. On a windy and rainy day it made buildings like this hellish. But on a day like this one it was fine because you could always see. As we scaled the flights of the southwestern tower we had views down into the Mynster, and out over the concent. ~ Neal Stephenson

It is no idle boast of the vermin Socialists that their system is Christianity, and no other is genuine. And look at them! To a man […] they are atheists and in favor of Free Love - whatever that may mean. I have talked with many Socialists, but never with one who understood his subject. Empty babblers they are, muddle-headed philanthropists. They read a shilling abridgement of John Stuart Mill, and settle all economic problems over a --sirloin of turnips-- in some filthy crank food dive. Ask them any question about detail, and the bubble is pricked. ~ Aleister Crowley

You ask me what it feels like to have wings. I can only tell you the feeling with words. And words have neither feelings nor wings. Words are leaky vessels into which a cargo of meaning and emotion are placed, and when they leave you and reach the farther shore of another mind a considerable portion of that cargo has been lost at sea. Fallen overboard, gone to rot, consumed by vermin, decayed to a state unlike its original form. ~ Steven R. Boyett

He (the British soldier) is generally beloved by two sorts of Companion, in whores and lice, for both these Vermin are great admirers of a Scarlet Coat. ~ Richard Holmes

Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the "vox populi" now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V. ~ Alan Moore

These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged. But down on Main Street, down on Towne and San Pedro, and for a mile on lower Fifth Street were the tens of thousands of others; they couldn't afford sunglasses or a four-bit polo shirt and they hid in the alleys by day and slunk off to flop houses by night. A cop won't pick you up for vagrancy in Los Angeles if you wear a fancy polo shirt and a pair of sunglasses. But if there is dust on your shoes and that sweater you wear is thick like the sweaters they wear in the snow countries, he'll grab you. So get yourselves a polo shirt boys, and a pair of sunglasses, and white shoes, if you can. Be collegiate. It'll get you anyway. After a while, after big doses of the Times and the Examiner, you too will whoop it up for the sunny south. You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semi-tropical nights will reek of romance, you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.
As for the folks back home, you can lie to them, because they hate the truth anyway, they won't have it, because soon or late they want to come out to paradise, too. ~ John Fante

He came from the gutters of England and anyone born and raised in those gutters knew that most persecution and oppression was inflicted by lawyers. Lawyers were the devil's servants who ushered men and women to the gallows, they were the vermin who gave orders to the bailiffs, they made their snares from statutes and became wealthy on their victims and when they were rich enough they became politicians so they could devise even more laws to make themselves even wealthier. ~ Bernard Cornwell

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms ... I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin. ~ Theodore Roethke

How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a treeful of rotten fruit. Nor do I believe in progress. A vermin-eaten saint scratching his filth for heaven is better off than you damned in clean linen. Progress doubles our tenure in a vale of tears. Man is a mistake, to be corrected only by his abolition, which he gives promise of seeing to himself. Oh, let him pass, and leave the earth to the flowers that carpet the earth wherever he explodes his triumphs. Man is inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is no Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook in the human heart. "Let there be light," we cry, and only the dawn breaks. ~ Peter De Vries

Are you lishening, my pretty vermin, are you lishening? ~ Mervyn Peake

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. ~ Barbara L. Christou

The "west"-what curse has fallen upon it that at the term of its trajectory it produces only these businessmen, these shopkeepers, these racketeers with their blank stares and atrophied smiles ... is it with such vermin as this that a civilization so delicate and so complex must come to an end? ~ Emil Cioran

Without the bargain he'd made he'd still be rotting in that North African jail with all the other vermin. ~ Toni Anderson

I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.'
'But the Magdalen?'
'Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. ~ Leo Tolstoy

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers
or should I say, nurses?
will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us. ~ C.S. Lewis

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers. ~ Michel De Montaigne

All schools have their skeletons. St Oswald's is no exception. Most of the time, we try our best to keep them in the closet. But this time, the only recourse we have is to throw open all the closets, light as many bulbs as we can and catch the vermin as it comes out. ~ Joanne Harris

And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats - the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion - the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink - oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course - very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it agai ~ Jerome K. Jerome

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and the vermin of the world inhabit it
and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
and it goes by the name of London.
At the top of the hole sit the privileged few
Making mock of the vermin in the lonely zoo
turning beauty to filth and greed ...
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of men is as wonderous as Peru
but there's no place like London! ~ Stephen Sondheim

Roschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985
Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!" ... and I'll look down and whisper "No. ~ Alan Moore

I fear the vermin that shall undermineSenate and citadel and school and shrine. ~ Edwin Markham

To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modem times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine 'love of one's enemies' is possible - supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! - and such reverence is a bridge to love. - For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture 'the enemy' as the man of ressentiment conceives him - and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived 'the evil enemy,' 'the Evil One,' and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a 'good one' - himself! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin? ~ Jacques Barzun

Herlia, goddess of justice, weeping as she passes her first judgement (...) She fell in love with a mortal man, but his passion for her drove him to commit a terrible crime and so she judged him, consigning him to the depths of the earth, chained to a rock, where his flesh is eternally eaten by vermin (...) Indeed, he stole a magic sword and with it slew a god, thinking him a rival for her affections. In fact he was her brother, Ixtus, god of dreams. now, whenever we suffer nightmares it is the shade of the fallen god taking his revenge on mortal kind. ~ Anthony Ryan

And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play. ~ Emile Zola

There was a barber and his wife
and she was beautiful...
a foolish barber and his wife.
She was his reason for his life...
and she was beautiful, and she was virtuous.
And he was naive.
There was another man who saw
that she was beautiful...
A biased vulture of the law
who, with a gesture of his claw
removed the barber from his plate!
And there was nothing but to wait!
And she would fall!
So soft!
So young!
So lost and oh so beautiful!

Antony (spoken)

The lady, sir...did she succumb?

Sweeney Todd (sung)

Ah, that was many years ago...
I doubt if anyone would know.
(spoken)
Now leave me, Antony.
There is somewhere I must go,
something i must find out.
Now, and alone.

Antony (spoken)

But surely we will meet again before I am off to Plymouth?

Sweeney Todd (spoken)

If you want you may well find me around Fleet Street. I wouldn't wander.
(sung)
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
and it's filled with people who are filled with shit!
And the vermin of the world inhabit it! ~ Stephen Sondheim

Still, that was the city, a great big filthy breeding-place for vermin – animal and human. ~ James Herbert

Keep a clear conscience. Contentment is the manna that is laid up in the ark of a good conscience: O take heed of indulging any sin! it is as natural for guilt to breed disquiet, as for putrid matter to breed vermin. Sin lies as Jonah in the ship, it raiseth a tempest. If dust or motes be gotten into the eye, they make the eye water, and cause a soreness in it; if the eye be clear, then it is free from that soreness; if sin be gotten into the conscience, which is as the eye of the soul, then grief and disquiet breed there; but keep the eye of conscience clear, and all is well. What Solomon saith of a good stomach, I may say of a good conscience, "to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet:"Pr. 27. 7 so to a good conscience every bitter thing is sweet; it can pick contentment out of the cross. A good conscience turns the waters of Marah into wine. Would you have a quiet heart? Get a smiling conscience. I wonder not to hear Paul say he was in every state content, when he could make that triumph, "I have lived in all good conscience to this day." When once a man's reckonings are clear, it must needs let in abundance of contentment into the heart. Good conscience can suck contentment out of the bitterest drug, under slanders; "our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience."2 Cor. 1. 12 In case of imprisonment, Paul had his prison songs, and could play the sweet lessons of contentment, when his feet were in the stocks.Ac. 16. 25 Augustine calls it "the paradise of a g ~ Thomas Watson

Humans aren't a protected class. (Acheron)
Really? (Jaden)
Yeah. Savitar shares your 'all humans are vermin' mind set. (Savitar) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Millions of human vermin swarm sweating along the night-arched cavernous roads. (Happily rapid chemical processes will disintegrate them all. ~ Richard Aldington

Touch but a cobweb in Westminster Hall, and the old spider of the law is out upon you with all his vermin at his heels. ~ Henry Fox

If I were the earth it would disgust me, all this vermin on my back, I'd shake it off. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The damn vermin are so numerous that I am afraid to sneeze, for fear the damned lice would regard it as gong for dinner, and eat me up - Robert Cobb Kennedy ~ Tobin T. Buhk

The Archbishop [Thomas Becket] was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day. The Archbishop was dressed in an extraordinary collection of clothes. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb's-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious haircloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and as MacArthur quotes the chronicler: 'The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter. ~ Hans Zinsser

We'd itch the vermin feasting on our flesh and share the day's many rumors:
The King had declared peace.
No, the King was sending German and Russian mercenaries to destroy us.
A ball of fire as big as a man's head fell from heaven to Hatboro - a good omen. But there'd been an earthquake near York just as a cat gave birth to puppies, which meant the worst. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

...Rusty followed. "You should probably pull out your gun. Whatever is in there made enough noise to make me believe it wasn't a bug." Kirsten's stride faltered, and she came to a stop at the door. "Okay, I'm gonna come clean right now. I cannot stand rats or mice. Snakes scare me less. So if I get in there and I see a furry vermin, I will scream like a little girl. If you tell anyone you witnessed that, I will ticket you every time you pull out of your driveway. Are we clear?" "Are you sure you don't want me to go to the store?" Kirsten met Rusty's gaze. "Are you clear on what I just said?" "Yep. ~ Robin Alexander

This easy obedience to tyrants, which often verged on devotion, always surprised him. He had come to believe that the majority of human beings aspired only to slavery. He had long wondered by what ruse this enormous enterprise of mystification orchestrated by the wealthy had been able to spread and prosper on every continent. Karamallah belonged to that category of true aristocrats who had tossed out like old soiled clothes all the values and all the dogma that these infamous individuals had generated over centuries in order to perpetuate their supremacy. And so his joy in being alive was in no way altered by these stinking dogs' enduring power on the planet. On the contrary, he found their stupid and criminal acts to be an inexhaustible source of entertainment -- so much so that there were times when he had to admit he would miss this mob were they to disappear; he feared the aura of boredom that would envelop mankind once purged of its vermin. ~ Albert Cossery

Consider ... the university professor. What is his function? Simply to pass on to fresh generations of numskulls a body of so-called knowledge that is fragmentary, unimportant, and, in large part, untrue. His whole professional activity is circumscribed by the prejudices, vanities and avarices of his university trustees, i.e., a committee of soap-boilers, nail manufacturers, bank-directors and politicians. The moment he offends these vermin he is undone. He cannot so much as think aloud without running a risk of having them fan his pantaloons. ~ H.L. Mencken

Why do we need so many people on Earth? I ask you. What are they good for? They live out ludicrous lives of pointless desperation. Ninety-nine percent of the human population is so much wasted resources. Stubborn vermin, we humans are.

Granted, in the past, the unwashed masses were necessary. We needed them to till our fields and fight our wars. We needed them to labor in our factories making consumer crap that we flipped back at them at a handsome profit.

Alas, those days are gone. We live in a boutique economy now. Energy is abundant and cheap. Mentars and robotic labor make and manage everything. So who needs people? People are so much dead white. They eat up our profits. They produce nothing but pollution and social unrest. They drive us crazy with their pissing and moaning. I think we can all agree that Corporation Earth is in need of a serious downsizing.
...
The boutique economy has no need of the masses, so let's get rid of them. But how, you ask? Not with wars, surely, or disease, famine, or mass murder. Despots have tried all these methods through the millennia, and they're never a permanent solution.

No, all we need to do is buy up the ground from under their feet -- and evict them. We're buying up the planet, Bishop, fair and square. We're turning it into the most exclusive gated community in history. Now, the question is, in two hundred years, will you be a member of the landowners club, or will you be living in some tin ~ David Marusek

I liked this shop very much, it has a cynical and obstinate look, it insolently recalled the rights of dirt and vermin, only two paces from the most costly church in France. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Hippocrates cured many illnesses - and then fell ill and
died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in
due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey,
Caesar - who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so
many thousand foot and horse in battle - they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire.
But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared
with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin,
Socrates by the human kind.
And?
You boarded, you set sail, you've made the passage. Time
to disembark. If it's for another life, well, there's nowhere
without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no
longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on
dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body - so
much inferior to that which serves it.
One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage. ~ Marcus Aurelius

There is a sort of busy worm, That will the fairest book deform. Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint The poet, patriot, sage or saint, Nor sparing wit nor learning. Now, if you'd know the reason why, The best of reasons I'll supply: 'Tis bread to the poor vermin. J. Doraston, quoted by W. Blades ~ Cornelia Funke

One morning Gregor Samsa found himself, in bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin. ~ Franz Kafka

There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

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

My earliest recollection is of coming upon some rabbit tracks in the backyard snow. I must have been three or so, but I had never seen a rabbit and can still recall the feeling of being completely captivated by the tracks: Someone had been here. And he left these prints. And he was alive. And he lived somewhere nearby, maybe even watching me at this very moment.
Four decades later, I do not need to be reminded that rabbits are often a nuisance to farmers and gardeners. My point is that when you look at a rabbit and can see only a pest, or vermin, or a meal, or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the rabbit anymore. You are seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites we bring to the world
seeing, come to think of it, like an animal instead of as a moral being with moral vision. ~ Matthew Scully

That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were. ~ Aneurin Bevan

After the sprout had broken through the (surface of) the ground," the handbook continues, the farmer should say a prayer to Ninkilim, the goddess of field mice and vermin, lest they harm the growing grain; he should also scare off the flying birds. When the barley has grown sufficiently to fill the narrow bottoms of the furrows, it is time to water it; and when it "stands high as (the
straw of) a mat in the middle of a boat," it is time to water it a second time. He is to water it a third time when it is "royal" barley, that is, when it has reached its full height. Should he then notice a reddening of the wet grain, it is the dread samana-dis- ease, which endangers the crops. If the barley is doing well, however, he is to water it a fourth time and thus obtain an extra yield of 10 per cent. ~ Samuel Noah Kramer

There is no hunt in Thanet, nor is there a fox problem. There is no Tooting hunt, no Wandsworth hunt and no Clapham hunt, but we can see foxes on their streets at night. If we want to control vermin we should work out how to deal with that problem. The idea that foxhunting controls the fox population is arrant nonsense. ~ Roger Gale

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

When my heart is cold and I cannot pray as I should I scourge myself with the thought of the impiety and ingratitude of my enemies, the Pope and his accomplices and vermin, and Zwingli, so that my heart swells with the righteous indignation and hatred and I can say with warmth and vehemence: 'Holy be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done!' And the hotter I grow the more ardent do my prayers become. ~ Martin Luther

We have a deal."
"The hell you do!" Maria cried out, dashing into the room. She barely noticed that the others stayed behind in the hall.
Nathan looked disconcerted by her appearance, and Oliver looked alarmed. "Leave this to me, Maria," he said tersely.
"The only way that scoundrel is getting your mother's pearls," she shot back," is if I strangle him with them." She marched up and snatched the box from Nathan. "Besides, you already have them to me."
"And you left them behind," Oliver reminded her. "Gran said you refused to keep them."
"Well, I want them now."
"At the risk of being dragged through the courts?" he said, coming to her side. "Of having your name maligned by this vermin?" He lowered his voice. "Do you really want him examining every action you've taken in the past two weeks, having it all laid out before a judge?"
She could tell he was thinking of her appearance at the brothel and the unpleasantness there, not to mention her public betrothal to him. "Let him do his worst." She had an ace in the hole.
She was about to call for Miss Kinsley when Oliver said, "Hyatt won't let go of this matter without some financial consideration. With 125,000 pounds at stake-"
Nathan's bark of laughter cut him off. "Is that what she's told you her half of the company is worth, Lord Stoneville?" Nathan sneered. "Now I understand why a marquess is sniffing around her."
Oliver's eyes turned a dangerous shade of black. He seized the ma ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Certainly the Ripper liked to believe he was actually doing the world a favor by ridding it of "vermin," as he put it. In his mind, his victims were "whores" who got what they deserved. ~ Patricia Cornwell

If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves. ~ Aldous Huxley

If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin. ~ Adolf Hitler

Because the rubber, too, is bulletproof. And so relentless is the wind that it rakes the street, pushing along this burden of crippled vermin, trundling this tide of suffering always in the wake of the Town Car as it reaches Spaulding Square. Fissures of lightning ~ Chuck Palahniuk

He takes out a cigarette and offers one to me.
"I try not to indulge. It's a filthy habit," I tell him.
"I love that word filthy. I love the way you force it out of your mouth like it's some kind of vermin you want to get rid of."
"You've had vermin in your mouth?"
"You're mean in that way, you know. You don't let anyone get away with pathetic analogies. ~ Melina Marchetta

The nut of this tree is hung high aloft, wrapped in a silk wrapper, which is enclosed in a case of sole leather, which again is packed in a mass of shock absorbing, vermin proof pulp, sealed up in a waterproof, ironwood case, and finally cased in a vegetable porcupine of spines, almost impregnable. There is no nut so protected; there is no nut in our woods to compare with it as food. What is a Chesnut? ~ Luis De Camoes

Apart from whether collectivism, the "communist vermin," is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, "bread for the poor," was something which he understood and, more importantly, filled him with hope. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

Todd:I had him!
His throat was there beneath my hand.
No, I had him!
His throat was there and now he'll never come again.
Mrs. Lovett: Easy now, hush love hush
I keep telling you, Whats your rush?
Todd: When? Why did I wait?
You told me to wait -
Now he'll never come again.
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And it's filled with people who are filled with shit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it.
But not for long...

They all deserve to die.
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.
Because in all of the whole human race
Mrs. Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two
There's the one staying put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one's face
Look at me, Mrs Lovett, look at you.

No, we all deserve to die
Even you, Mrs Lovett, even I!
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death will be a relief
We all deserve to die.

And I'll never see Johanna
No I'll never hug my girl to me - finished!
Alright! You sir, how about a shave?
Come and visit your good friend Sweeney.
You sir, too sir? Welcome to the grave.

I will have vengenance.
I will have salvation.
Who sir, you sir?
No ones in the chair, Come on! Come on!
Sweeney's. waiting. I want you bleeders.
You sir! Anybody!
Gentlemen now don't be shy!

Stephen Sondheim

Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness. ~ William Carlos Williams

See, the Germans aren't kidding about the Jews. They're cooking us down to soap over there. They think we're vermin and should be 'sterminated and our corpses turned into something useful. ~ Herman Wouk

Hrist and his word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith. ~ Martin Luther

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants. ~ Noam Chomsky

Margie had known many men, most of them guilty, wounded in their vanity, or despairing, so that she had developed a contempt for her quarry as a professional hunter of vermin does. It was easy to move such men through their fears and their vanities. They ached so to be fooled that she no longer felt triumph
only a kind of disgusted pity. ~ John Steinbeck

[Asteroids are] the vermin of the skies.
[Asteroids can block objects of interest on astronomical photographs.] ~ Walter Baade

I say, sah! Sorry to trouble you to get off your big fat bottom and help a poor gel out!"
"I would not have helped if you hadn't have needed it. You were doing well on your own until the vermin started trying to use trickery." Dottie bounced on her footpaws, her large ears stand up straight. "I know, sah! The bally old blighters didn't know wot hit 'em!" Lord Brocktree hid a smile. ~ Brian Jacques

The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall. ~ Frederick Rolfe

Never mind gas masks and fallout shelters in the event of biological warfare. Many New Yorkers move from place to place equipped with the essentials of vermin assault weaponry: mouse traps, roach spray, and sticky tapes. In some neighborhoods, it's a must. ~ Isabel Lopez

Sookie: Is Eric around?"
Pam: "He is enthralling the vermin, ~ Charlaine Harris

Look," Cam said irritably, "I'm here on behalf of Lord Ramsay's family. They want him back. God knows why. Give him to me, and I'll leave you in peace."
"If they want him," the butler said frostily, "let them send a proper servant. Not a filthy Gypsy."
Cam rubbed the corners of his eyes with his free hand and sighed. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Frankly, I'd rather not go through unnecessary exertion. All I ask is that you allow me five minutes to find the bastard and take him off your hands."
"Begone with you!"
After another foiled attempt to close the door, the butler reached for a silver bell on the hall table. A few seconds later, two burly footmen appeared.
"Show this vermin out at once," the butler commanded.
Cam removed his coat and tossed it onto one of the built-in benches lining the entrance hall.
The first footman charged him. In a few practiced movements, Cam landed a right cross on his jaw, flipped him, and sent him to a groaning heap on the floor.
The second footman approached Cam with considerably more caution than the first.
"Which is your dominant arm?" Cam asked.
The footman looked startled. "Why do you want to know?"
"I'd prefer to break the one you don't use as often."
The footman's eyes bulged, and he retreated, giving the butler a pleading glance.
The butler glared at Cam. "You have five minutes. Retrieve your master and go."
"Ramsay isn't my master," Cam ~ Lisa Kleypas

I lead a life much below my level. Beyond the books, which trickle in slowly (I have to read what I can get, not what I have a mind to read), I have nothing to sustain my inner life; and everything around me exudes an indescribable prosiness, which presses down on me too with its brutal weight. Nothing on the order of a stroll with a dear person, not one hour of quiet and serene contemplation--all is tainted by mundane worry and staleness. I take it that productive creators fence themselves off from their environment by a certain regimen of living, a certain organization of their daily routine that does not allow the workaday banality, humdrum job, and the rest of it to get to them. I badly feel the lack of such a regimen, my incapacity to subject myself to such a discipline. One must, for instance, fence off one's inner life, not permit the vermin of ordinary cares to infest it. Some blindness used to protect me from this truth; I wore blinkers like a horse in harness. Now reality has won and penetrated my interior. ~ Bruno Schulz

It took me till I was lying among the Rats and Vermin, upon the freezing edge of a Future invisible, to understand that my name had never been my own, - rather belonging, all this time, to the Authorities, who forbade me to change it, or withhold it, as 'twere a Ring upon the Collar of a Beast, ever waiting for the Lead to be fasten'd on. . . . ~ Thomas Pynchon

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Abysmal vermin that I am, I couldn't of course tell her that it was her incredible mother that I wanted to see again ... I knew only as I drove through the cold, night autumn air that somewhere Freud, Sophocles and Eugene O'Neill were laughing. ~ Woody Allen

Evey: Who are you?
V. : Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask.
Evey: Well I can see that.
V. : Of course you can, I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
Evey: Oh, right.
V. : But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the "vox populi" now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.
The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey: Are you like a crazy person?
V. : I'm quite sure they will say so. ~ Alan Moore

A man of God is seeking a situation to exterminate nocturnal vermin. The fee is fifty pounds, half of which will be due in advance. ~ Brooklyn Ann