C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Dirt
Dirt is not dirt, but only something in the wrong place.
Dirt has been shrewdly termed “misplaced material.”
By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
I confess I could never see any good reason why dirt should always be a necessary concomitant of poverty.
In Nature there is no dirt, everything is in the right condition; the swamp and the worm, as well as the grass and the bird,—all is there for itself. Only because we think that all things have a relation to us, do they appear justifiable or otherwise.
“Ignorance,” says Ajax, “is a painless evil”; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.