Abomination

An abomination is something worthy of, or causing, abhorrence, as a thing of evil omen.

Quotes

• Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.
  • The Bible, Book of Proverbs 12:22, King James Version.

• The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, in "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv", in A Universal History of Iniquity (1935); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998); Cf. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940).

• One of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940).
  • Variant translation: For one of those gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.

• We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, 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.
  • Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1

• It is an abomination to my king.
  • Debate between Silver and Copper (middle to late 3rd millennium BCE). [1]

• Compare not thyself with others, but with Me. If thou dost not find Me in those with whom thou comparest thyself, thou comparest thyself to one who is abominable.
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669) § 555.

• The wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.
  • Ptahhotep, The Maxims of Ptahhotep (c. 2350 BCE), Maxim no. 11.

• Coveting and spying are abominations to Ninurta.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection III at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.