Quotes & Sayings About Abomination

I take many things seriously. Rudyard Kipling, Harper Lee, Oscar Wilde, and Elmore Leonard are all held in the highest regard. I am dead serious when I discuss the many reasons that Ernest Hemingway's greatest contribution to literature was his generous decision to take his own life. I will not be sucked into a discussion of politics by people who prefer emotion to reason. The designated hitter is an abomination, and the day pitchers and catchers report is the start of the new year despite what those ill-informed calendar makers might try to tell you." "I — Brian D. Meeks

He did not affirm the revolting conception of original sin, nor did he feel inclined to argue that it is a beneficent God who protects the worthless and wicked, rains misfortunes on children, stultifies the aged and afflicts the innocent. He did not exalt the virtues of a Providence which has invented that useless, incomprehensible, unjust and senseless abomination, physical suffering. Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

But as the primeval past faded into memory, mankind's knowledge expanded and its hubris grew with the promise of the Serpent that humans would become as gods. The Watchers became less obvious with passing time, as they sought to work more behind the veil of the supernatural world. As divine beings, Watchers could exert hypnotic effect on humans to see them in any appearance they desired. Thus, the eight-foot tall shining Belial made himself appear to be a mere five-foot ten being, both male and female, neither male nor female, a dissolution of gender, an abomination in the Law of God. But to Belial, such intolerant condemnation would not stop him from looking good. Unlike the ordinary, quite uncomely human before him, Belial still wanted to stand out from the crowd. He reveled in abomination. — Brian Godawa

You are an abomination before God.
Jesus loves you too, I said smiling. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Think twice before you pull your trouser and rape a woman; she may be your mother, sister or friend, and you know the consequences that follows. — Michael Bassey Johnson

It must be pleasant to be occasionally guilty of a small abomination. — Eliphas Levi

The way you give love is the most profoundly human part of you. When people say it's ugly or a perversion or an abomination, they're attacking the center of your being. — Tony Kushner

To touch this abomination with anything less perfectly attuned to its nature than the carefully dispersed wings of an engine field would be like an ancient, fragile rocket ship falling into a sun, like a wooden sea-ship encountering an atomic blast. — Iain M. Banks

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And — Imbolo Mbue

Apparently she didn't know about that abomination of the senses in which cute boys can hear you speak their names from literally any distance in space and/or time. — Katie Heaney

It's not an abomination. It's a bunnycat. — Ilona Andrews

The mystic's idea of deliberately stupefying and stultifying himself is an "abomination unto the Lord." This, by the way, does not conflict with the rules of Yoga. That kind of suppression is comparable to the restrictions in athletic training, or diet in sickness. — Aleister Crowley

This is the Homosexuality Is An Abomination Club, right? — John Green

When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool.
When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons. — R. Scott Bakker

For a trader - hell, for any American - being empty of promise is an abomination. — Katya G. Cohen

Yesterday's abomination is today's rule. — Robert Lane Greene

too - my god, what kind of brutal abomination dismisses the suffering of the majority of the world's population as worth sustaining a tiny number of pinheaded elites - is proof enough that we don't deserve a future. I — Lidia Yuknavitch

Yoooou!" she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man. "Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh! — J.K. Rowling

It is necessary to constantly remind ourselves that we are not an abomination. — Marlon Riggs

Idols of the injury,
dug in behind the least understood
motor plan information.
The vile abomination temporal lobes and
The four loathsome memory walls and
The four reasoning, arithmetic beasts
are found for all behind pain and planes.
Portrayed as a house,
Go in, function, cause blindness from
The house's hearing spirit, judgment and
The court's four bronze woes and
The functioning brain lobe wings,
Go in, hearing and perception,
I dig under door fronts, pain and plans. — Bill Ectric

I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination. — Criss Jami

It does seem to me, though, that there is a difference between the Mormon Church saying, "We don't accept gay people within the Church; we don't accept gay marriage within the Church; we don't accept people who act on their homosexual desires within the Church;" and trying to interfere with what happens outside of the Church. That seemed to me to be an abomination. — Andrew Solomon

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. — Neil Gaiman

The Devil's minions worked his treacherous plot through the hearts of men, possessing them, ruling them. These hounds of hell ran wild these days through their human hosts, working greater and greater abominations. — Eric J. Martindale

Centralization is an abomination! Decentralize everything! Leave nothing to the central planners. — A.E. Samaan

Time travel isn't a wonder; it's an abomination. — Cristin Terrill

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. — Maya Angelou

That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Violence especially against women and children is a abomination that must cease and desist! Humanity will never find world peace as long as we keep on hurting and destroying each other! — Timothy Pina

There is not justice in this world. Father, forgive me wherever you are, but this world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I'll not live to see the meek inherit anything. — Barbara Kingsolver

I think how veterans are treated in our country is an abomination. We don't have the draft any more, which is why so many soldiers come from working-class - rather than middle- or high-income families. Those wealthier families aren't affected, so they're not agitating for change. — Laurie Halse Anderson

This one isn't just any old horse. There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be? I tell you, my friend, there's divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don't belong in the same universe as a creature like this. — Michael Morpurgo

Footfalls edged closer, putting her tiger on full alert. She ran faster. Several yards ahead, a man stepped into her path. She skidded to a halt and realized he wasn't a man, but a mutant - half-wolf, half-man - and abomination. — Lia Davis

It is a sinful abomination for one part of the world's Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters ache and suffer for lack of minimal health care, minimal education, and even - in some cases - enough food to escape starvation. — Ronald J. Sider

Embrace Your Abomination!" - in regards to religious zealots constantly calling gays an abomination. — Rickey Russell

America's 1st Arab spring came in the guise of the Civil War ... when our nation couldn't stomach the abomination of slavery anymore. One can't help keep wondering ... when the next one will come. — Timothy Pina

Abomination . . ." The word escaped him in a slow breath. "And more besides," I agreed. "Now forgive me." Father Gomst found his wits at last, but still he held back. "What do you want with me, Lucifer?" A fair question. "I want to win," I said. He — Mark Lawrence

16 There are d six things that the LORD hates, d seven that are an abomination to him: 17 e haughty eyes, f a lying tongue, and g hands that shed innocent blood, 18 h a heart that devises wicked plans, i feet that make haste to run to evil, 19 j a false witness who k breathes out lies, and one who a sows discord among brothers. — Anonymous

A hobby is, of course, an abomination, as are all consuming interests and passions that do not lead directly to large, personal gain. — Fran Lebowitz

How many times have you been called an abomination?" he whispers. "A monster? Worthless?"
Too many times. — Marie Lu

Improbable as it may be, the day still has a few indignities left. The day waters down indignity with frustration to make it last longer. Abomination, thy name is Subway. He cannot enter. They flood through turnstiles, hips banging rods, and will not let him enter. He must get home, but it's all he can do to get halfway in before another one charges at him. A fish out of school. Everybody knows how it works except for him. All of them from every floor are crammed into this one subway car: the makers of memos, the routers of memos, the indexers filers and shredders of memos, the always-at-their-desks and the never-around. How do they all fit. Squabbling like pigeons over stale crumbs of seats. Everyone thinks they are more deserving, everyone thinks their day has been harder than everyone else's, and everyone is correct. — Colson Whitehead

And so I have remained, in relentless pursuit of truth and excellence, an unforgiving executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few people who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them. — Louise Brooks

Any act of hatred or violence to anyone on this planet is an act of hatred to everyone. To destroy other innocent lives because they act or feel different, believe different ideologies or religions, speak a different tongue or are a different color is a abomination and crime against humanity. The world is diverse ... it always will be. Diversity is what makes us human. It's time to stop acting like 1st century barbarians destroying everything we believe is wrong and for the sake of humanity ... put all our differences to bed and try to get along. — Timothy Pina

I truly don't judge other people's actions. But I think that factory farming is an abomination. — Moby

The very first day that President [Barack] Obama was inaugurated, his first act as a president was to rescind that ban on third-trimester abortions. And he's even carried it further. Now, even if the baby is born alive, they have the right to kill that baby. It is an abomination. — Ted Cruz

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass. — H.P. Lovecraft

Human behavior, ninety-eight percent of it, is an abomination. — Thom Jones

But the degradation of the women was avenged in the men and degraded them also, until they sank into the abomination of boy-love. — Friedrich Engels

A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble. — Adlai Stevenson I

In any case civilization has made mankind if not more blood-thirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely blood-thirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

One's nature comes from within, not from without. The abomination occurs in subverting one's instinct in favor of a rigid code written by others. Trying to force yourself into a role that confounds your spirit will always break you. — Garth Stein

A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly - see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon - and from such a beginning! — Walt Whitman

To transport this way along bouncy mountain roads is not the way to die. Every woman deserves the simple dignity of dying in a bed with clean sheets and an electric light at hand. They wanted me to participate in a horrible abomination. I simply will not countenance the lack of respect for the poor mother of those boys. Imagine how she would feel if she woke up and saw her sons piled at her side.
-spoken by Sara to Matt regarding a victim of Amanita Phalloides [poisoning — Joe Niemczura

But beyond the hysteria of phantom death panels, where is the abomination? Show me the provisions that will hurt consumers, because if you think a $110 billion a year tax break for working-class Americans to buy private health insurance is a government takeover, I welcome the debate. — Jim McDermott

An unholy church! it is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell's laughter, heaven's abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one: what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Consider everything in the nature of a hanging fixture a weakness, and naked radiators an abomination. — Frank Lloyd Wright

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

Catholics speak, like baseball players, in the coded language of gesture. Sure, the Roman Catholic Church is an abomination to man and a disgrace to God, but it comes with a highly structured Mass, several sacred pilgrimages, the oldest songs, the most impressive architecture, and a whole bunch of things to do whenever you enter the church. Taken all together, they make you one with your brother. — Joshua Ferris

I thought that communism, the tyranny of communism, was an abomination and I beseeched God to bring that terrible evil down and he did. It was a great triumph, it took awhile, but it happened. — Pat Robertson

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity. — John Boyle O'Reilly

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.' (Leviticus 18:22). That means simply that it is foul to do to other men what men habitually, proudly, manfully do to women: use them as inanimate, empty, concave things; fuck them into submission; subordinate them through sex. — Andrea Dworkin

It was truly an abomination of nature that one always found the most comfortable spot in the bed five minutes before one had to leave it. — Mia Ryan

War is a great destroyer. And human history has arrived at a pivotal moment. We can choose a path built on cooperation, where our caring and sharing side uplifts us, or we can continue to embrace a worldview where domination using violence imprisons us in cycles of killing and destruction. I'm a biologist, and war is not genetically fixed. War is a cultural invention. It's time to end this abomination, and this World Beyond War movement is uniquely focused on unifying the human community to create one of the biggest revolutions in history. I'm in. Join us! — Judith Hand

Slavish obedience to the clerics, who know how to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of religion, is killing our girls. We must speak-blaspheme, if necessary; be accused of being apostates, if that is what is required. Muslims are taught that Islam put an end to the Arabian practice of burying alive newborn baby girls because they were considered worthless and a burden, but as long as we stay quiet in the face of the abomination of child marriage, we are effectively burying our girls alive today. — Mona Eltahawy

In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What rights are there for homosexuals? The only right is to be led to repentance. To live in such defilement of the body, in such dishonour, in such abomination, while all the time asking for liberties the church cannot grant, is unbelievable. — Pope Shenouda III

Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? — Barack Obama

Irish nationalists can never be the assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation. The two nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy. — John Redmond

When I awake, I suddenly understood this propensity for self-destruction was not an abomination, not something to be ashamed of or abhorred; it was our greatest strength. We turn the gun on ourselves not because we are more indifferent and less cultured...on the contrary. We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer, or the person. — Amor Towles

The demon say's "Do you view sexual acts between individuals of the same gender to be an abomination?" ...
"Do you approve," the demon says, "of marriage between individuals of differing racial backgrounds?"
The demon continues without hesitation, asking, "Should the Zionist state of Israel be allowed to exist?"
Question after question, I'm stumped. Even fingers crossed. The paradox: Is God a racist, homophobic, anti-semantic ass? Or is God testing to see if I am? — Chuck Palahniuk

The asacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight. — Anonymous

Through the various discourses, legal sanctions against minor perversions were multiplied; sexual irregularity was annexed to mental illness; from childhood to old age, a norm of sexual development was defined and all the possible deviations were carefully described; pedagogical controls and medical treatments were organized; around the least fantasies, moralists, but especially doctors, brandished the whole emphatic vocabulary of abomination. — Michel Foucault

I do not think I was a hothead - not then and not now. I thought I was right. I had read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible. Segregation seemed evil from the time I was a boy. Slavery is an abomination on the American soul, ineradicable stain on our body politic. But Penn Center lit a fire that has never gone out, and the election of President Barack Obama was one of the happiest days of my life. — Pat Conroy

The Bible says that man lying with another man as with a woman is an abomination. I have never lain with a man as if he were a woman. I have no interest in such a thing. If I lie with a woman, it is because she is a woman and I want to treat her as one. If I lie with a man, it is because he is a man and I want to treat him as one. — W.A. Hoffman

If it's an abomination, Dad, you're just doing it wrong. Bear down hard, then release. It'll fit better. — Tiffany Reisz

There is no story that is not true, [ ... ] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. — Chinua Achebe

Set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell. Make them pay attention. Set fire to the soul. Anything less is an abomination to creation. — Susan Marie

You're the half-sister of the full-blood demon, Valenti. The illegitimate child of Asmodeus - one of the Seven Princes of Hell. You were sold at birth as a plaything for lesser demons."
"A half-blood abomination," he snarled. "An embarrassment to demons everywhere. By all rights, you should be dead. — Pippa DaCosta

Oh little Poupchette, some may tell you that you are nobody's child, a child of defilement, a child begotten in fear and horror. Some may tell you that you are a child of abomination conceived in abomination, a tainted child, a child polluted long before you were born. Do not pay attention to them, my little sweetheart, please do not listen to them; listen to me. I say you are my child and I love you. I sometimes say that out of horror, beauty and purity and grace are born. I say I am your father for ever. I say the loveliest rose can bloom in contaminated soil. I say you are the dawn, the light of all my tomorrows, and the only thing that matters is the promise you represent. I say you are my luck and my forgiveness. My darling Poupchette, I say you are my whole life. — Philippe Claudel

O r simple ones, learn s prudence; O t fools, learn sense. 6 Hear, for I will speak u noble things, and from my lips will come v what is right, 7 for my w mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. — Anonymous

A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience. — Alexander Cockburn

It's a yeti," said Gaspar from behind me, obviously having been roused from his trance. "An abominable snowman." "This is what happens when you fuck a sheep!?" I exclaimed. "Not an abomination," Josh said, "abominable." The yeti licked him on the cheek. — Christopher Moore

The sound of you, it offends me. Abomination, I command you to be silent. — Thomas E. Sniegoski

Let me tell you something right now, something that I don't want you ever to forget: Starbucks is an abomination.
Lex was speechless. She now believed that there was no way in a million years this man could possibly be a blood relative. — Gina Damico

the ways Black people are portrayed as the ultimate evil to justify historically and currently our exploitation, containment, and murders; the fact that for Black people and other people of color, the history of slavery, genocide, white supremacy, and colonialism is the only true horror story, and it is one we continue to live every day; and the fact that resistance of the oppressed to these structures has always been seen as the most frightful abomination that could be birthed. Through — Walidah Imarisha

Maybe the abomination had infected her with his claws after all, and this was all some kind of fevered hallucination. This shit was crazy enough to qualify as a dream, right? — Bethany K. Lovell

But why?" Gabriel asks. "Why do they wish to cause such pain to another human?"
"Why does the Spanish Inquisition do what it does?" I ask. "Why does our own Church burn witches at the stake? Why did our own crusaders punish the Moors so exquisitely?"
Gabriel thinks about this. He knows I don't beg answers for these questions.
"Of course it's easy to say that we mete out punishment to those who are an abomination in God's eyes," I say. "But it's more than that, isn't it? I think we don't just allow torturers but condone them as a way to excise the fear we all have of death. To torture someone is to take control of death, to be the master of it, even for a short time. — Joseph Boyden

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish. — Matt Taibbi

But I couldn't draw as fast as she requested. Thus, I tried to create the worst abomination of a comic that I could, so as to make her not want comics anymore. That abomination, my friends, was Happy Noodle Boy. — Jhonen Vasquez

In its rational form [dialectic] is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. — Karl Marx

He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination
you know. — Joseph Conrad

Before they committed the crime of crimes, before they killed their Master, before the cross, before the slaying of Christ, [Jewish sacrifices were] an abomination. — Saint John Chrysostom

If you pledge yourself to the Inquisition, to me, and swear to use your powers and your knowledge to send malfettos back to the Underworld, I will give you everything you've ever wanted. I can grant your every desire. Money? Power? Respect? Done." He smiles. "You can redeem yourself, change from an abomination in the gods' eyes to a savior. You can help me fix this world. Wouldn't it be nice, not having to run anymore?" He pauses, and for a moment, a note of real, painful tragedy enters his voice. "We are not supposed to exist, Adelina. We were never meant to be." We are mistakes. — Marie Lu

I prefer solitude to companions, since there are so few men who are trustworthy, and almost none truly learned. I do not say this because I demand scholarship in all men -- although the sum total of men's learning is small enough; but I question whether we should allow anyone to waste our time. The wasting of time is an abomination. — Girolamo Cardano

I, too, am a drum major for justice. I will continue to speak out-LOUD and PROUD- as long as gay youth are killing themselves because someone instilled in them they are not enough. Well, baby, you're more than enough. You were molded with the same care and precision as your heterosexual counterparts. You are unique. God has a special plan for you that only you can fulfill. Live your life! — J'son M. Lee

And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. — Joseph Campbell

I do nothing I regret, man, because I try to do nothing abominable. As long as there is not an abomination, there is nothing to regret, you understand? — Peter Tosh

Where are the young who must dedicate their roseate hours, their illusions and enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who must generously spill their blood to wash away so much shame, so many crimes, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must be the victim for the holocaust to be acceptable. Where are you, you children who must embody the vigor of life that has fled from your veins, the purity of ideas that has become in our minds and the fire of enthusiasm that has gone out in our hearts? We await you, Oh youth! Come, we await you! — Jose Rizal

Look into the face of a man who will kill you for a belief and your nostrils will snuff up the scent of abomination. Hear a speech declaring a holy war and, I assure you, your ears should catch the clink of evil's scales and the dragging of its monstrous tail over the purity of the language. — Terry Pratchett