Clay Pot Quotes

“There are four on whose pots the Holy One, blessed he, knocked, only to find them filled with piss, and these are they: Adam, Cain, the wicked Balaam, and Hezekiah.
Again, an abrupt transposition from the divine to the domestic, from upper to lowly spheres, occurs in the midrash. The homely image of the Holy One knocking on pots apparently derives from the practice of tapping on a clay or earthen pot to hear its ring in order to decide if it is worthy of holding wine. In current Hebrew usage, the expression 'to assess or gauge someone's pot' still denotes taking in the measure of a person's character. From Adam's answer to God, we learn that he turned out to be a pisspot.”

— Shuli Barzilai

“PERFECTION The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

— David Bayles

“Marriage without struggle is like an unfired clay pot.
It is easily made, but it will not stand the test of time.”

— Allan Wolf

“For as from the same piece of clay a potter may fashion either a pot or a tile, so the Devil may shape a witch into a wolf or a cat or even a goat, without subtracting from her and without adding to her at all. For this occurs just as clay is first molded into one, then shaped into another form, for the Devil is a potter and his witches are but clay.”

— Aino Kallas

“I like strong people. The ones who have gone through immense pain and hardened like a clay pot. They feel pain, but they smile. They faced problems and emerged victorious. Maybe, they lack materialistic things, but they are the ones with 'peace of mind' - one thing I long, everyone longs.
I like strong people. The ones who have peace of mind. The ones who know not having things is ok.”

— Saru Singhal

“The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?”

— Steven Erikson

“Life gives us clay; it is we to make a pot out of it! But sometimes it gives us pot; it is again we to keep it in one piece, as a pot! All jobs are ours! Life only gives things and it has no other responsibility!”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“His bowels, far greater alchemist than he had ever been, regularly performed the transmutation of corpses, those of beasts and of plants, into living matter, separating the useful from the dross without help from him. Ignis inferioris Naturae: those spirals of brown mud, precisely coiled and still steaming from the decocting process which they have undergone in their mold, this ammoniac and nitric fluid passed into a clay pot, were the visible and fetid proof of work completed in laboratories where we do not intervene. It seemed to Zeno that the disgust of fastidious persons at this refuse, and the obscene laughter of the ignorant, were due less to the fact that these objects offend our senses than to our horror in the presence of the mysterious and ineluctable routines of our bodies.”

— Marguerite Yourcenar

“We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.”

— Lao Tzu

“We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds
whatever we want.”

— Lao Tzu

“When a sin comes back (its memory) you absolutely must bury it. How to bury the memory of a sin that comes from a distant past? I shut it up in a clay pot. Then I dug right into the cold hard ground, deep down. Without of course telling anyone what I had in the pot,then I stuck this pot the size of a little quart saucepan into the ground and I covered the hole in the ground with ice for a long time, and that despite the presence of people who had no inkling what I was ridding myself of in this little improvised coffin.”

— Hélène Cixous

“So then they'd snuggled up to each other, naked, and started to talk. Ezra told her about the time he was six and sculpted a red squirrel out of clay, only to have his brother squash it. How he used to smoke a lot of pot after his parents got divorced. About the time he had to take the family's fox terrier to the vet to have her put to sleep. Aria told him about how when she was little, she kept a can of split pea soup named Pee as a pet and cried when her mom tried to cook Pee for dinner.”

— Sara Shepard

“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

“Freedom can never be true of name and form; it is the clay out of which we (the pots) are made; then it is limited and not free, so that freedom can never be true of the related. One pot can never say "I am free" as a pot; only as it loses all ideas of form does it become free.”

— Swami Vivekananda

“To get wealth and security by guileIs like one who pours water into a pot of unbaked clay.”

— Thiruvalluvar

“You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic - and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother's Day card and school report since day one.”

— Pam Brown

“When you live on Cold Mountain long enough the autumns pass quickly When you live alone you have no worries When you leave the doors open no one bothers you The bubbling stream runs forever In the cave a clay pot boils over a fire on the ground A wandering breeze stirs the fragrant pines When hungry I eat one simple meal And lean against the rock in complete harmony”

— Hanshan

“Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors
form the house,
but the empty space within it
is the essence of the home.”

— Laozi

“Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where a wheel isn't is where it's useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pots not is where it's useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn't, there's room for you. So the profit in what is, is in the use of what isn't.”

— Laozi