WIST Quotations

Martial -- Epigrams [Epigrammata], Book 1, epigram 83 (1.83) (AD 85-86) [tr. Davison (1608)]

Dave — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 18:44:59 +0000

I muse not that your Dog turds oft doth eat;
To a tongue that licks your lips, a turd’s sweet meat.

[Os et labra tibi lingit, Manneia, catellus:
Non miror, merdas si libet esse cani.]

Martial (AD c.39-c.103) Spanish Roman poet, satirist, epigrammatist [Marcus Valerius Martialis]
Epigrams [Epigrammata], Book 1, epigram 83 (1.83) (AD 85-86) [tr. Davison (1608)]
(Source)

"On Manneia." (Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

That thy Dog loves to lick thy Lips, th'art pleas'd;
He'll lick that too, of which thy Belly's eas'd;
And not to flatter, and the Truth to smother,
I do believe, he knows not one from t'other.
[tr. Killigrew (1695)]

On thy lov'd lips, the whelpling lambent hung.
No wonder if a dog can feed on dung.
[tr. Elphinston (1782), Book 12, ep. 171]

Your lap-dog, Manneia, licks your mouth and lips:
I do not wonder at a dog liking to eat ordure.
[tr. Bohn's Classical (1859)]

Your face and lips, Manneia, your little dog licks;
I don't wonder that a dog likes to eat filth.
[tr. Ker (1919)]

Your dog licks your mouth and you don't push him from it.
But what says the proverb -- "A dog and his vomit"?
[tr. Pott & Wright (1921)]

Your puppy licks your face and your lips:
No wonder, considering the way he also dips
into turds.
[tr. Bovie (1970)]

Your little dog licks you from head to foot
Am I surprised, Manneia?
Not a bit.
I’m not surprised that dogs like shit.
[tr. O'Connell (1987)]

Manneia, your little dog licks your face and lips. Small wonder that a dog likes eating dung.
[tr. Shackleton Bailey (1993)]

Manneia, your lapdog licks his lips with his tongue.
It’s no surprise that a dog likes eating dung.
[tr. McLean (2014)]

Dear Manneia:
Your lapdog’s licking your lips and chin:
no wonder with that shit-eating grin.
[tr. Juster (2016)]

Your little puppy licks your mouth and lips --
Manneia, I no longer find it strange
That dogs are tempted by the smell of turds.
[tr. Salemi]

Your puppy licks your mouth and lips
And never wants to quit.
Manneia, I don't wonder why.
All dogs eat their shit.
[tr. Cooper]

Bukowski, Charles -- Factotum, ch. 65 (1975)

Dave — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 21:56:25 +0000

Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) German-American author, poet
Factotum, ch. 65 (1975)

Sinclair, Upton -- The Jungle, ch. 14 (1906)

Dave — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 19:04:59 +0000

It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white — it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one — there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water — and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.

Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) American writer, journalist, activist, politician
The Jungle, ch. 14 (1906)
(Source)