“Vile man, begot of clay, and born of dust.”

“My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust.”

“How loved, how honored once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!”

“True love is born of experience, not fairy dust.”

“Now sure enough the vile man leads the vile!
As ever, god brings like and like together!”

“Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame — were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?”

“This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.”

“A field of clay touched by the genius of man becomes a castle.”

“Though every great prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”

“Our love was born
outside the walls,
in the wind,
in the night,
in the earth,
and that's why the clay and the flower,
the mud and the roots
know your name.”