Clay quotes
168 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside clay — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. . . . Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not."
"The same sun that melts the butter hardens the clay."
"I like doing clay work. It's different from drawing on a page because you have something to mold into different shapes. It's quite visual, it's a thing you can hold and feel, and that makes it different from drawing."
"A vessel is formed from a lump of clay with care, however, it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful."
"Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful."
"Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay."
"But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike."
"God, how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of each other."
"The weapon of nonviolence does not need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings of common clay can use it and have used it before this with success."
"We put thirty spokes to make a wheel: But it is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges. We make a vessel from a lump of clay; But it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful. We make doors and windows for a room; But it is the empty spaces that make the room livable. Thus, while existence has advantages, It is the emptiness that makes it useful."
"Take them, O Death! and bear away Whatever thou canst call thine own! Thine image, stamped upon this clay, Doth give thee that, but that alone!"
"Have you noticed that bones are always modeled and not carved, that you always have the impression they come from a mold, that they were first modeled in clay? Any bone you look at, you always find fingerprints on it."
"Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility."
"Where are they written?" "In the world around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life, and you will discover where, every moment of the day, He hides His words and His will. Seek to do as He asks: this alone is the reason you are in the world." "If I discover it, I'll write it on clay tablets." "Do so. But write them, above all, in your heart; there they can neither burned nor destroyed, and you will take them wherever you go."
"False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day ... the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she's piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own."
"Some make you sing and some make you scream. One makes you wish that you'd never been seen. But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier mache, making bullet-proof faces, Charlie Manson, Cassius Clay. If you want it, boys, get it here, thing."
"Data!data!data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."
"Sex is of the same clay as Time! -- of the same clay Since both are in their essence but One-Way Time is the one-way dimension: sex its tart And subtle biological counterpart."
"Who hail thee, Man! the pilgrim of the day, spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay."
"Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod."
