Agreeable Associations

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (November 3, 1857):

I notice some old cow-droppings in a pasture, which are decidedly pink. Even these trivial objects awaken agreeable associations in my mind...

The Odour of Farts

Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (London: The Bodley Head, 1971), p. 78:

I cannot remember what particular item in the routine of a boarding-school roused this first act of rebellion—loneliness, the struggle of conflicting loyalties, the sense of continuous grime, of unlocked lavatory doors, the odour of farts (it was sexually a very pure house, there was no hint of homosexuality, but scatology was another matter, and I have disliked the lavatory joke from that age on).

Something That Never Was Before

Bendt Alster, Sumerian Proverbs in the Schøyen Collection = Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology, 2 (Bethesda: CDL Press, 2007), p. 8:

Something that never was before: A young girl (who) does not fart in the lap of her husband.

Thanks to a friend for drawing this to my attention.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Commode

Robert Halsband, "New Anecdotes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," in René Wellek and Alvaro Ribeiro, edd., Evidence in Literary scholarship: Essays in Memory of James Marshall Owen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 241-246 (at 245):

She shew'd him her Commode, with false backs of books, the works of Pope, Swift, and Bolinbroke: she said she knew them well. They were the greatest Rascals, but she had the satisfaction of shitting on them every day.

Do Not Poison Thyself

From Don Juan Lamberto; or, a Comical History of the Late Times. By Montelion, Knight of the Oracle, in Walter Scott, ed., A Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts, Vol. VII (London: T. Cadell et al., 1812), p. 140:

Neptune seeing his wife so much concern'd, thought it no time to dally; therefore out of the charriot he comes; which, when the gyant Husonio beheld, and saw also by the looks of him that he was plaguy mad, he resolved to take what advantage he could, and therefore squeezing his hypochondrions, he let such a fart as blew out all the torches; then taking his cloak-bag in his right hand, and his club in his left, he put himself into a posture of defence. The fart as it was great, so it was strong, and the scent thereof so much offended the nose of Thetis, that she was not able to endure it; 'O come away Neptune,' quoth she. 'and do not poyson thyself and me too: let my bason and ewer go to the devil, so as I may but get out of this stink I care not.'

The Island of Ruach

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel IV.43 (tr. J.M. Cohen):

They do not shit, piss, or spit on this island. But, on the other hand, they poop, fart, and belch most copiously. They suffer from all sorts and varieties of diseases. For every malady originates and develops from flatulence, as Hippocrates proves in his book, On Wind. But the worst epidemic they know is the windy colic, as a remedy for which they use large cupping-glasses, and so draw off much wind. They all die of dropsy or tympanites; they all fart as they die, the men loudly, the women soundlessly, and in this way their souls depart by the back passage.

OIT

Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 231:

Why did they formulate Olestra this way? Because the early, more liquid versions caused gastrointestinal problems. One of these—"anal seepage," or, in my preference, "passive oil loss"—occurs when fully liquid Olestra separates from the food with which it was cooked and slips along the inner walls of people's intestines, bypassing everything else in its way. Drops of Olestra show up on their underwear or floating in their toilets. (The FDA actually abbreviates this as OIT, "oil in toilet.")