Clay Quotes - Page 11

• I am convinced, by repeated observation, that marbles, lime-stones, chalks, marls, clays, sand, and almost all terrestrial substances, wherever situated, are full of shells and other spoils of the ocean.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Ocean, Science, Rocks

  Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1785). “Natural History, General and Particular”, p.13

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• There was never much question as to what I was going to do in life, because working with clay was what I could do . . . there are things I watch my hand do that are almost thoughtless. I can remember the moment of learning them. It is knowledge you have in the hand.

  Charles Simonds

  Art, Hands, Watches

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• Immense deposits of kimmeridge clay, containing the oil-bearing bands or seams, stretch across England from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. [An early political recognition of the native resource. The Geological Survey had identified the inflammable oil shale in reports since at least 1888.]

  Winston Churchill

  Oil, Political, Band

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• The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Rain, Eye

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.209, Random House

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• Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  Wilfred Owen

  Fighting, Sunbeams, Grew

  Poems (1963 ed.) "Futility"

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• I have but shadowed forth my intense longing to lose myself in the Eternal and become merely a lump of clay in the Potter's divine hands so that my service may become more certain because uninterrupted by the baser self in me.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Hands, Self, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Ronald Duncan (2005). “Gandhi: Selected Writings”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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• It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less. On, on, on for ever, without recreation may suit spirits emancipated from this 'heavy clay', but while we are in this tabernacle, we must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure. Let no tender conscience doubt the lawfulness of going out of harness for a while

  Charles Spurgeon

  Running, Long, Doubt

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• He didn't know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without quite knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Knowing, Our Words, Deeds

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• If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.

  Teresa of Avila

  Attachment, Order, Soul

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• Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries.

  Saul Bellow

  Country, Writing, Hypocrite

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• Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.

  Aristophanes

  Dream, Race, Darkness

  Aristophanes (2012). “The Birds”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• Futility Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, - Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved -still warm -too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? -O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

  Wilfred Owen

  Morning, Stars, Kindness

  1918 'Futility', collected in Poems (published1920).

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• The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.

  Bernard Malamud

  Time, Past, Fiction

  Dubin's Lives (1979) p. 20

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• You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.

  Rick Yancey

  Ears, Masters, Masterpiece

  Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.128, Penguin

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• What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.

  Rick Yancey

  School, Masterpiece

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• I am pure light, not just a fistful of clay. The shell is not me, I came as the royal pearl within. Look at me not with outward eye but with inward vision of the heart; Follow me there and see how unencumbered we become.

  Rumi

  Healing, Heart, Eye

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• There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Mistake, Fall

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• Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects —hardly recognisable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles — made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
  'It seems cruel,' she said, 'that after a while nothing matters... any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: "Use unknown".'

  Edith Wharton

  Time, Glasses, People

  "The Age of Innocence".

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• The Long March The Red Army is not afraid of hardship on the march, the long march. Ten thousand waters and a thousand mountains are nothing. The Five Sierras meander like small waves, the summits of Wumeng pour on the plain like balls of clay. Cliffs under clouds are warm and washed below by the River Gold Sand. Iron chains are cold, reaching over the Tatu River. The far snows of Minshan only make us happy and when the army pushes through, we all laugh. October 1935

  Mao Zedong

  Happiness, Laughter, Army

  Zedong Mao (2008). “The Poems of Mao Zedong”, p.63, Univ of California Press

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• I really do think that art can save you in some sense. It's the last meaning, unless you're religious-and I'm not religious. It's the only secular vehicle for transcendence we have. It's an immediate self-validating experience. It lifts you beyond your mortal clay.

  Sam Savage

  Religious, Art, Thinking

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• A fiery soul, which working out its way,
  Fretted the pygmy-body to decay:
  And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.
  A daring pilot in extremity;
  Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high
  He sought the storms...

  John Dryden

  Work Out, Soul, Storm

  John Dryden, “Absalom And Achitophel”

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• We each deal with childhood in different ways. That brothers and sisters can take the same lump of clay that is childhood and use it to shape themselves into unique human beings is a miracle in itself. Despite individual struggles, triumphs, joys and disappointments, someone is made of the same stuff and has been at your side, whether figuratively or literally, from the beginning. Use our brother and sister quote collection to explore this truth and gain compassionate understanding for yourself and your siblings.

  Laura Ramirez

  Sister, Brother, Disappointment

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• If you knew yourself for even one moment, if you could just glimpse your most beautiful face, maybe you wouldn’t slumber so deeply in that house of clay. Why not move into your house of joy and shine into every crevice! For you are the secret Treasure-bearer, and always have been. Didn’t you know?

  Rumi

  Beautiful, Moving, House

  "Overcoming Self-Doubt — What I Have Been Learning From Rumi" by Faisal Hoque, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 15, 2015.

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• The sightless Milton, with his hair Around his placid temples curled; And Shakespeare at his side,-a freight, If clay could think and mind were weight, For him who bore the world!

  William Wordsworth

  Thinking, Hair, Boredom

  William Wordsworth (1837). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Together with a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England, Now First Published with His Works ...”, p.236

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• From the time I can first recall the rain falling on the red clay in Florida. I wanted to make things. When my brothers and sisters were making mud pies, I would be making ducks and chickens with the mud.

  Augusta Savage

  Brother, Fall, Rain

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