“I have touched filth.

Only with the finger tip I touched it,

inquisitive of the taste of it.

But it creeps.

It has spread over my body a slime,

and into my soul a stupor (…)”

— Olaf Stapledon , book Last Men in London

Last Men in London (1932)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I have touched filth. Only with the finger tip I touched it, inquisitive of the taste of it. But it creeps. …" by Olaf Stapledon?

Olaf Stapledon 113

British novelist and philosopher 1886–1950

Related quotes

“Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot, I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2021

“You have an incredible body." He reaches out to touch my stomach. I feel no pleasure in his compliment or his touch, only impatience. This is the only feeling. I feel like the paper on which my mood chart is printed.”

Augusten Burroughs book Dry

Source: Dry

“I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

“This is a book and a body that is so warm to the touch. My touch.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the sixth book, "The Book of the Lover"
The Pillow Book

“Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia, my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

We the People interview (1996)
Context: Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia, my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us. This relationship was called vision. Then, after Galileo, the idea developed that the eyes are receptors into which light brings something from the outside, keeping you separate from me even when I look at you. People began to conceive of their eyes as some kind of camera obscura. In our age people conceive of their eyes and actually use them as if they were part of a machinery. They speak about interface. Anybody who says to me, "I want to have an interface with you," I say, "please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror." Anybody who says, "I want to communicate with you," I say, "Can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are."