Clay Quotes - Page 5

• We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not.

  William James

  Life, Men, Vanity

  "Essays in Religion and Morality".

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Black music has always known, and not been afraid to acknowledge just how high the stakes of Black thought are. To summarize the final soliloquy of Clay, the protagonist in LeRoi Jones’ (aka Amiri Baraka’s) play Dutchman. You’d better be glad Charlie Parker could play him some horn and Bessie Smith could sing, because if they didn’t make music they might murder you. One would be hard pressed to find another group of people on this planet whose music is a surrogate for murder. One would be hard pressed to another group of people on this planet whose life is a proxy for death.

  Frank B. Wilderson III

  Aka, Play, People

  10 Copy quote

• [The internet] ought to be like clay, rather than a sculpture that you observe from a distance.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Distance, Science, Sculpture

  10 Copy quote

• What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny?' 'Make yourself at home?' 'Marry my daughter?' You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know . . . morons.

  Gene Wilder

  Daughter, Home, Simple

  "Fictional character: Jim". "Blazing Saddles", www.imdb.com. 1974.

  411 Copy quote

  Show source

• God can take what Satan meant for shame and use it for His glory. Just when we think we've messed up so badly that our lives are nothing but heaps of ashes, God pours His living water over us and mixes the ashes into clay. He then takes this clay and molds it into a vessel of beauty. After He fills us with His overflowing love, He can use us to pour His love into the hurting lives of others.

  Lysa TerKeurst

  Hurt, Thinking, Water

  8 Copy quote

• Walk with me, but don't follow me blindly. Hold fast to the truth, not to my garments. My body is merely a clay structure; today it is here, tomorrow it shall be gone. If you attach yourself to me today, what are you going to do tomorrow when I am not with you? Attach yourself to God, attach yourself to humanity, only then will you be closer to me.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Humanity, Gone, Body

  4 Copy quote

• Know that you are God's beautiful child, always in God's hands. Accept God... accept God's protection... there is really no problem to fear. Know that you are not the clay garment. Know that you are not the self-centered nature which governs your life needlessly. Know that you are the God-centered nature, The Kingdom of God within. The Indwelling Christ. Eternal and indestructible. Identify with the real you.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Beautiful, Children, Real

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.71, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

  Eric Hoffer

  Power, Men, Anti God

  9 Copy quote

• I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.

  David Levithan

  Beautiful, Sadness, Porcelain

  David Levithan (2013). “Every Day”, p.37, Egmont UK

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. "Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!"

  Jack London

  Stars, Evil, Flesh

  Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard, August 11, 1905.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm happiest when most away I can bear my soul from its home of clay On a windy night when the moon is bright And the eye can wander through worlds of light— When I am not and none beside— Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky— But only spirit wandering wide Through infinite immensity.

  Emily Bronte

  Home, Eye, Moon

  8 Copy quote

• I love mythic stuff. I love playing with gods, I love playing with myths. A lot of it has to do with that they're the basic places stories come from. They're the clay that you make the bricks out of.

  Neil Gaiman

  Stories, Stuff, Bricks

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 28, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What was once impossible now summons us to dismantle the walls between ourselves and our sisters and brothers, to dissolve the distinctions between flesh and spirit, to transcend the present limits of time and matter, to find, at last, not wealth or power but the ecstasy (so long forgotten) of commonplace, unconditional being. For the atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest of clay. The life of every woman or man-the heart of it-is pure and holy joy.

  George Leonard

  Inspirational, Brother, Wall

  4 Copy quote

• A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.

  Wallace Stevens

  Eye, Men, Light

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.30, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Baby, Stars, Children

  "The Defendant". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1901.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A child is imprinted not by simply teaching. But their attention is like soft clay. The attention field of adults is stratified. They are like hard clay and we push them on each side of the child's attention field.

  Frederick Lenz

  Children, Teaching, Buddhism

  4 Copy quote

• I like to write my lyrics on clay tablets.

  Randy Newman

  Writing, Tablets

  4 Copy quote

• In creation myths, a god shapes mud or clay into living form, much like a potter throws a pot or a sculptor reveals the statue within a block of marble. But a writer has to create his own clay or stone before he can begin shaping life from it.

  Stuart Dybek

  Block, Writing, Potters

  7 Copy quote

• Every individual, from the common mechanic, that works in wood or clay, to the prime minister that regulates with the dash of his pen the agriculture, the breeding of cattle, the mining, or the commerce of a nation, will perform his business the better, the better he understands the nature of things,and the more his understanding is enlightened.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Agriculture, Understanding, Woods

  Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, J.R. McCulloch (2013). “History of Economic Theory: The Selected Writings of Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and J.R. McCulloch”, p.133, Coventry House Publishing

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll; on plastic clay and leather scroll, man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, and lo! the Press was found at last!

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Men, Media, Age

  John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Library”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have our thoughts, our hopes, our fears, and yet we know that in a moment a change may come over any one of us that will convert a living, breathing human being into a mass of lifeless clay.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Breathing, May, Moments

  William Jennings Bryan (1924). “William Jennings Bryan on Orthodoxy, Modernism, and Evolution”, Facsimiles-Garl

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.

  Louis L'Amour

  Life, Lying, Fate

  127 Copy quote

• Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature, That fashions all her works in high relief, And that is Sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth, Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire; Men, women, and all animals that breathe Are statues, and not paintings.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Fashion, Animal, Men

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Illustrated)”, p.1578, Delphi Classics

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Fire, Fields, Craters

  Erich Maria Remarque (1997). “All Quiet on the Western Front”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.

  Jerry Lewis

  Fall, Taken, Two

  36 Copy quote