God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases. – Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees.

We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. “It must be up there somewhere on the horizon,” we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet. – William Bryant Logan, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils. – Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors