Rotten Quotes

“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.”
― Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

“Lingering, bottled-up anger never reveals the 'true colors' of an individual. It, on the contrary, becomes all mixed up, rotten, confused, forms a highly combustible, chemical compound then explodes as something foreign, something very different than one's natural self.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“You mustn’t blame yourself for the way the boy’s turned out, Vernon. If there’s something rotten on the inside, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.”
― Huysmans Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas

“the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk...

I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up.

Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief.

It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers.

To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret!

And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!...

Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long?

The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!”
― Jean Lorrain, Monsieur de Phocas

“I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Feeling rottten is much worse than feeling just bad or sad. Feeling rotten is when it seems like no one else in the world understands how you're feeling. When you're feeling rotten everything seems rotten around you.”
― Tom Fletcher, The Christmasaurus

“A poetess is not as selfish
as you assume.
After months of agonising
over her marriage of words—the bride—
and spaces—the groom,
she knows that as soon
as she has penned the poem,
it’s yours to consume.
So, without giving it a think,
she blows on the ink
and the letters fly away
like dandelions on a windy day,
landing on hands and lips,
on hearts and hips.
But more often than not,
you can easily spot
them trodden and forgotten,
becoming sodden and rotten.
Yet, she will continue to make
what’s others to take
because selfishness
is not the mark of a poetess.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.”
― Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

“I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I'm not a killer. I wanted to frighten you, but I never wanted you dead. I never wanted anyone dead.”
― Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“...Many shadows hide behind light, and the best lies are those seasoned liberally with truth: salt covering the flavor of rotten meat.”
― Brent Weeks, The Broken Eye

“Wherever in the world a country is governed by spiritually ill, politically empty, ethically rotten and mentally stupid people, over there you can find nothing but chaos, tears and fire!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Beautiful, enticing, forbidden fruit will be offered to you when your "hunger" is greatest. If you are foolish enough to reach for it, your fingers will sink into the rotten mush on the back side. That's the way sin operates in our lives. It promises everything. It delivers nothing but disgust and heartache.”
― James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future

“Souls are flowers, only God has the right to pluck them. But those who commit suicide: their souls are the rotten blossoms of devil's garden.”
― Munia Khan

“Careful minds build durable buildings; careless minds build rotten buildings!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn't very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.”
― Lawrence Jamieson, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

“Do not take a refuge to the close rotten branches during drowning attempt to reach to the solid ones even if they are far.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Never lose hope; until your bones are rotten, never give up. Once the final whistle did not blow up, keep running hard!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Shaping the dream

“Paco is walking out of the bathroom and I rush past him.
"You might want to wait before you--" Paco's voice fades as I close the door, locking myself in. Wiping my eyes, I gaze into the mirror. I'm a complete mess. My mascara is dripping and . . . oh, it's no use. I slide down and sit on the cold tile floor. Now I realize what Paco was about to tell me. The place stinks; it really reeks . . . almost to the point where I want to throw up. I put my hand over my nose, trying to ignore the offending smell.

***

After locking the door behind him, he crouches beside me and takes me in his arms, pulling me close. Then he sniffs a few times. "Holy shit. Was Paco in here?"
I nod.
He smoothes my hair and mutters something in Spanish.

***

She, too, sniffs a bunch of times. "Was Paco in here?"
Alex and I nod.
"What the fuck does that guy eat that it comes out his other end smelling so rotten? Dammit," she says, wadding up tissue and putting it over her nose.”
― Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry

“I learned that I knew it (there are some things in life, you knew before you could put the words to them, for me, this was one) upon first seeing the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and hearing Lawrence Jamieson (Michael Caine) utter these words:

Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn't very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.”
― Lawrence Jamieson

“If you keep feeding your soul with rotten fruits, don’t expect your bones to be strong enough for a climb.”
― Shweta Tale

“What Mufy means is that he is in possession of rather capacious breasts for a male of the human species”
― Fred Barnett, Second Chances — I Re-wrote My Life and Improved It! So Can You!

“If half of a country is rotten, the other half will soon start rotting as well!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“​More than GM Foods I am afraid of GMM People. Genetically and Mentally Mutated People. The Entire Ecosystem Mutates.”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“There are some things in life you know even before you can put words to them. Then it dawned on me, upon first seeing the film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and hearing Lawrence Jamieson (Michael Caine) utter these words:

Freddy, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, a painter, and a musician. There was just one problem: I wasn't very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful. I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent. I knew my limitations. We all have our limitations, Freddy. Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style were commodities that people desired. Freddy, what I am saying is: know your limitations. You are a moron.”
― Lawrence Jamieson, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

“Love is often described as a fruit you can just reach out with your hand and pluck. However, one should beware, that although glowing in color, the fruit could be poisonous, tainted, or rotten.”
― RJ Intindola— (Gandolfo) – 1986

“Where did he come from? You'll love this. The word python was from the Greek pytho, which means rotting. The monster Python was born out of the festering, rotten slime left over from the great flood when Zeus drowned the world. Tasty!”
― Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

“Rather than clinging to the time spent with the wrong people and recalling the bad phase of life; treat these as rotton tomatoes and get rid of.”
― Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma, Debit Credit of Life: from the good books of accounts

“When you spend your life around rotten people, you wind up in rotten situations. And if you're not careful, the rotten rubs off, sometimes infecting a body that wasn't even standing nearby. Everyone forgets that rotten carries a stench that travels far and worms its way inside the lungs to irritate the whole part.”
― Amy Matayo, They Call Her Dirty Sally