Potter's Wheel Quotes & Sayings

Culture can only be produced, it can only be created - not conserved, not saved or rescued. Culture arises without our really being aware of it; in the deepest sense culture is innocent and unconscious. When an Egyptian potter turned a pot on the wheel, he didn't sit there thinking that now he was producing Egyptian Culture - he was working for a living. That what he made was also lovely, is due to his professional skill - but also to something extra which came of itself, like love. That can't be rescued either, when it ends. It comes and goes of itself. Neither culture nor love can be saved, not even by the police.
- "The Traitor" (1961) — Jens Bjorneboe

Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown, A flaw is in thy ill-bak'd vessel found; 'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound, Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command, Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand: Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel The first sharp motions of the forming wheel. — John Dryden

We're all diamonds in the rough until God gets His hands on us".

~R. Alan Woods [1984] — R. Alan Woods

I am not the potter, not the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay; is not the value of the shape attained as dependent upon the intrinsic worth of the clay as upon the wheel and the Master's skill? — Stephen King

Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue
for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Llonio said life was a net for luck; to Hevydd the Smith life was a forge; and to Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman a loom. They spoke truly, for it is all of these. But you,' Taran said, his eyes meeting the potter's, 'you have shown me life is one thing more. It is clay to be shaped, as raw clay on a potter's wheel. — Lloyd Alexander

They devised such useful tools, skills, and techniques as the potter's wheel, the wagon wheel, the plow, the sailboat, the arch, the vault, the dome, casting in copper and bronze, riveting, brazing and soldering, sculpture — Samuel Noah Kramer

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years
all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held
all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet. — Haruki Murakami

My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel;
I know not where I am nor what I do. — William Shakespeare

Think of a potter taking a misshapen bowl from his wheel and pounding it back into the tub of clay. A soul suffers while it is being pounded in this way, and suffers until it ceases to be. You are pounded down, and that which was you gets into something else. God tries again, and tries until the Work is complete. Meanwhile you, my son, are long gone — K.J. Bishop

Zen brings creativity. And remember, if you want to be one with the creator, you will have to learn some ways of creativity. The only way to be one with the creator is to be in some moment of creativity, when you are lost. The potter is lost in making his pottery; the potter is lost while working on the wheel. The painter is lost while painting. The dancer is lost; there is no dancer, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments, where you touch God, where God touches you. — Rajneesh

Go home, and let all your relatives off the potter's wheel. You are not the potter! — Joyce Meyer

I am not the potter, nor the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay, does it depend on the value achieved intrinsic as much as the value of the clay as the wheel and master craftsmanship? — Stephen King

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies. — Terry Pratchett