"In man, creator and created are united; in man in the material, the fragment, the surplus, the clay, the mud, the foolishness, the chaos; but in man also is the creator, the sculptor, the wielder of the hammer, the beholder of divinity, the seventh day."

"Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning."

"Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

"If they find some stain or blemish in a name of note, not grieving that their greatest are so small, inflate themselves with some insane delight, and judge all nature from her feet of clay."

"What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?"

"A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be “clay.”"

"To get wealth and security by guile Is like one who pours water into a pot of unbaked clay."

"Do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"