Clay Quotes - Page 18

• What well-advised ear regards What earth can say? Thy words are gold, but thy rewards Are painted clay.

  Francis Quarles

  Gold, Ears, Earth

  Francis Quarles, William Walker Wilkins (1866). “Emblems, Divine and Moral: The School of the Heart ; And, Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man”, p.62

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• There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall acquiesce, with the remark that the later position might be considered a more rarefied muddle. But poets rather specialize in muddles and I have no doubt which of the muddles was better for Auden's poetry: one was fertile and usable, the other decidedly is not. Auden sometimes seems to be saying with Henry Clay, "I had rather be right than poetry"; but I am not sure, then, that he is either.

  Randall Jarrell

  Attitude, Doubt, Might

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden's Poetry" (p. 131), 1969.

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• The Southern past, the Southern present, the Southern future, concentrated into Gertrude's voice, became one of red clay pine-barrens, of chain-gang camps, of housewives dressed in flour sacks who stare all day dully down into dirty sinks.

  Randall Jarrell

  Dirty, Past, Voice

  Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.66, University of Chicago Press

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• If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Intellectual, Liberty, World

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1929). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll...”

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• I consider myself an artist, but instead of paint or clay, my medium is drag. I put so much of myself into my drag from every detail of the costume, makeup and hair to my performance, the way I speak or even stand.

  Manila Luzon

  Artist, Makeup, Hair

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Heart, Eye

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• We can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the East wanted Apocalypse left out of the New Testament. But like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the grand Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet. There is Jesus--but there is also John the Divine. There is Christian love--and there is Christian envy. The former would "save" the world--the latter will never be satisfied till it has destroyed the world. They are two sides of the same medal.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Christian, Jesus, Father

  D.H. Lawrence (1974). “Apocalypse”

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• Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

  Wilfred Owen

  Sleep, Toil, Earth

  'Greater Love' (written 1917)

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• I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.

  Andrew Jackson

  People, Political, Secret

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• I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palette for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness altogether.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Children, Boys, Dust

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.435, Faber & Faber

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• Nature, they say, doth dote,
  And cannot make a man
  Save on some worn-out plan
  Repeating us by rote:
  For him her Old World moulds aside she threw
  And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
  Of the unexhausted West,
  With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.

  James Russell Lowell

  Sweet, Hero, Men

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.431

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• These Germans seem an odd race, a mixture of clay and spirit - what with their beer-drinking and smoking, and their slow, stolid ways, you would think them perfectly earth; but ethereal fire is all the while working in them, and bursing out in most unexpected jets of poetry and sentiment, like blossoms on a cactus.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Drinking, Beer, Thinking

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• Representative William McK. Springer, remarks in the House, quoting Henry Clay: As for me, I would rather be right than be President. Reed: Well, the gentleman will never be either.

  Bill Vaughan

  House, Gentleman, President

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• Clay Aiken ran for Congress in North Carolina. But he didn't make it. Clay Aiken is famous for coming in second in a TV popularity contest that most people got fed up with years ago. He also lost on 'American Idol.'

  Craig Ferguson

  Years, Idols, People

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• I am a humble artist moulding my earthly clod, adding my labour to nature's, simply assisting God. Not that my labour is needed, yet somehow I understand, my Maker has deemed it that I too should have Unmoulded clay in my hand.

  Piet Pieterszoon Hein

  Humble, Artist, Hands

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• Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mean, Reality, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1869). “Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh : in Three Books”, p.131

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• The Wise (Minstrel or Sage,) out of their books are clay; But in their books, as from their graves they rise. Angels--that, side by side, upon our way, Walk with and warn us!

  Bill Vaughan

  Wise, Book, Angel

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• Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down. You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation.

  Craig Ferguson

  Dream, Hero, Ideas

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• …[Thomas Wolfe] says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, uh, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can’t avoid that.

  Richard Linklater

  Writing, Use, Moments

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• I called. Why wasn't anyone here?"- Elena We were here." Clay said. "Around, anyway. You should have left a message." I did. Two hours ago." - Elena Well that explains it. I've been out, by the gate all day, waiting for you, and you know Jer never checks the machine."- Clayton I didn't know how Clay had known I was coming back today when I hadn't left a message. Nor did I question why he'd spent the entire day waiting at the gate. Clay's behavior couldn't be measured by human standard's of normalcy... or by any standards of normalcy at all. Bitten

  Kelley Armstrong

  Should Have, Two, Waiting

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• When she saw my messy desk, she said she was the same way, and there was no dust on the TV, and I was easy to love. People just need a little help because they are so used to not loving. It's like scoring the clay to make another piece of clay stick to it.

  Miranda July

  Dust, People, Needs

  Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico's children they stand pinched and patient in last year's too-small shoes.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Dog, Prayer, Children

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• I hear voices. A shout. A laugh. Clay's laugh. I strained to see through the night. Fog had rolled in from Lake Ontario, but I could hear him laughing. The concrete turned to grass. The fog wasn't from the lake, but from a pond. Our pond. I was at Stonehaven, bounding through the back acres. Clay was running ahead of me.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Running, Night, Lakes

  Kelley Armstrong (2012). “Werewolves: Book One: Bitten, Stolen and Beginnings”, p.506, Vintage Canada

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• In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art--the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases--beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.

  Anne Rice

  Art, Men, Garden

  Anne Rice (2003). “The vampire Lestat”

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• Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat -- was, literally, talked into life.

  Michael Chabon

  Rivers, World, Goats

  Michael Chabon (2012). “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel”, p.119, Random House

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