“The trouble with trying to find a brown-covered book among brown leaves and brown water at the bottom of a ditch of brown earth in the brown, well, grayish light of dawn, was that you couldn’t.”
″ ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Brown.‘We really shall have to give him a bath as soon as we get indoors. It’s getting everywhere.’ Paddington looked thoughtful. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t like baths; he really didn’t mind being covered with jam and cream. It seemed a pity to wash it all off quite so soon.
“But the truth was the drain had made him very slimy, and it was necessary for him to take a bath and sprinkle himself with a bit of his mother’s violet water before he felt himself again.”
“Nobody knew exactly why Wanda sat in the seat unless it was because she came all the way from Boggins Heights, and her feet were usually caked with dry mud that she picked up coming down the country roads.”
“John, how can you expect sick people to come and see you when you keep all these animals in the house? It’s a fine doctor would have his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice!”
“Children are foul and filthy!” thundered The Grand High Witch.
“They are! They are!” chorused the English witches. “They are foul and filthy!”
“Children are dirty and stinky!” screamed The Grand High Witch.
“Dirty and stinky!” cried the audience, getting more and more worked up.”
“Once he brought home a lost cat, and some time later a stray puppy. But his mother said animals brought dirt into the house, and so Pascal was soon alone again in his mother’s clean well-kept rooms.”
“Wasn’t it lucky that Matt’s robbers were so much better, Ronia thought. She looked at them as they sat at the long table slurping up their soup. They were bearded and unwashed and noisy and wild, but no one was going to call them dirty devils in her hearing.”
“And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out that he was dirty; and burst into tears with shame and anger; and turned to sneak up the chimney and hide; and upset the fender and threw the fire-irons down with a noise of ten thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand mad dogs tails.”
“The Little House was very sad and lonely. Her paint was cracked and dirty... Her windows were broken and her shutters hung crookedly. She looked shabby...”
“It was Sundays that saved her. After morning church she went straight to the garage, put on her jeans, and though only emergency work was really done on Sundays, the foreman always had something ready for her. Very dirty and happy, she would work until they had to dash home for lunch.”
‘Dirty!’ said Rhoda. ‘Just try it,’ said Stanley. ‘Don’t touch it, don’t look at it!’ said Rhoda. ‘When we get home,‘said Stanley, ‘Daddy will fix it.’ ‘What will Daddy do?’ asked Rhoda.‘Take the bee sting out of your foot.’ Stanley answered.”