Defecation Quotes

“Civilization rests on two things," said Hitzig; "the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendidly civilized occasion be without both?”
― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

“Some kid asked what a dilemma is. And I replied: When a starving man has to choose between a plate of food, and, a roll of toilet paper.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In the hierarchy of man's activities, eating was the lowest. Eating had become the object of a cult, but in fact it was but the preliminary to other, utterly contemptible motions. It occurred to him that he wanted to perform one of these too.”
― Elias Canetti, Auto-da-Fé

“Nothing reminds one of how shitty inequality is more often than the fact that there are companies who make and people who use 1-ply toilet papers.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most people would rather eat inside a windowless room in which they have just defecated than eat inside one in which someone else has just farted, even if the room does not have a toilet.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Many women describe the feeling of having a baby come out of their vagina as taking the biggest shit of their lives. This isn’t really a metaphor. The anal cavity and vaginal canal lean on each other; they, too, are the sex which is not one. Constipation is one of pregnancy’s principal features: the growing baby literally deforms and squeezes the lower intestines, changing the shape, flow, and plausibility of one’s feces. In late pregnancy, I was amazed to find that my shit, when it would finally emerge, had been deformed into Christmas tree ornament — type balls. Then, all through my labor, I could not shit at all, as it was keenly clear to me that letting go of the shit would mean the total disintegration of my perineum, anus, and vagina, all at once. I also knew that if, or when, I could let go of the shit, the baby would probably come out. But to do so would mean falling forever, going to pieces.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“I have the liberty to defecate anywhere I like,
For my mother has no privacy to pee.”
― Vinod Varghese Antony, A Candle Of Light: A Collection Of Poems

“It feels great to wake up and go to the bathroom and have an amazing shit, relieving my body of the waste that has built up in my colon. And the times when this does not happen, it is more or less tenesmus.”
― Adrian Dane Kenny

“Gastrointestinal issues were commonly reported during COVID-19 infections.”
― Steven Magee, COVID Supplements