C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Cleanliness
If dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
Let thy mind’s sweetness have its operation upon thy body, clothes, and habitation.
Cleanliness may be defined to be the emblem of purity of mind.
Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. “Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”
For cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves.
So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character. Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanliness, who was a consummate villain.
Beauty commonly produces love, but cleanliness preserves it. Age itself is not unamiable while it is preserved clean and unsullied; like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel cankered with rust.