import string
delete_table  = string.maketrans(
    string.ascii_lowercase, ' ' * len(string.ascii_lowercase)
)
table = string.maketrans('', '')

"Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd".translate(table, delete_table)

import string
delete_table  = string.maketrans(
    string.ascii_lowercase, ' ' * len(string.ascii_lowercase)
)
"Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd".translate(None, delete_table)

for i in xrange(10000):
    ''.join(c for c in s if c.islower())

real    0m0.189s
user    0m0.176s
sys 0m0.012s

for i in xrange(10000):
    re.sub(r'[^a-z]', '', s)

real    0m0.172s
user    0m0.164s
sys 0m0.004s

r = re.compile(r'[^a-z]')
for i in xrange(10000):
    r.sub('', s)

real    0m0.166s
user    0m0.144s
sys 0m0.008s

real    0m0.075s
user    0m0.064s
sys 0m0.012s

s = 'Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd'
print ''.join(c for c in s if c.islower())

>>> import re
>>> s = 'ASDjifjASFJ7364'
>>> re.sub(r'[^a-z]+', '', s)
'jifj'

>>> import re
>>> s = 'ASDjifjASFJ7364'
>>> r = re.compile(r'[^a-z]+')
>>> r.sub('', s)
'jifj'

>>> s = 'Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd'
>>> ''.join(i for i in s if  i in 'qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm')
'ghzdrkfd'

s = 'ASDjifjASFJ7364'
s_lowercase = ''.join(filter(lambda c: c.islower(), s))
print s_lowercase #print 'jifj'

s = 'Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd'
 lowercase_chars = [chr(i) for i in xrange(ord('a'), ord('z') + 1)]
 whitelist = set(lowercase_chars)
 filtered_list = [c for c in s if c in whitelist]

filtered_str = ''.join(filtered_list)

filtered_list = filter(lambda c: c.islower(), s)

import string
print "".join([c for c in "Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd" if c in string.lowercase])

import string

print filter(string.lowercase.__contains__, "lowerUPPER")
print filter("123".__contains__, "a1b2c3")

inputstring = "Agh#$%#%2341- -!zdrkfd"
whitelist = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
remove = inputstring.translate(None, whitelist)
result = inputstring.translate(None, remove)
print result

ghzdrkfd