The rottenness comes from within.

If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness…

— Henry David Thoreau

“All along the line,' said the volunteer, pulling the blanket over him, 'everything in the army stinks of rottenness. Up till now the wide-eyed…

— Jaroslav Hašek

“blasphemy, pride, injustice and all the vices which are like the rottenness of souls, are found heaped up. To this moral filth a corporal…

— Fr Francois Xavier Schouppe

A good woman is the crowning joy of her husband, but a bad one is like rottenness to his bone. - adaeze don

— Adaeze Don

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

— Thomas Jefferson

Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.

— Samuel Smiles

“Sapping the foundations of civilisation, of authority, of other people’s altars, spattering them with filth, winking jocosely at them only to justify and conceal…

— Anton Chekhov

If this fail, The pillar'd firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble.

— John Milton

Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness.

— Abraham Lincoln

The perfection of rottenness.

— William James

So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.

— Beatrix Potter

The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything!

— Marcus Aurelius

“One who provokes a person by speaking has only called to the surface the passion that was already there. The person who becomes disturbed…

— Dee Pennock

Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness

— Mark Twain

Hopes have precarious life. They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness.

— George Eliot