Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Pottery
I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Tramp Abroad. Ch. XX.
For a male person bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes.
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Tramp Abroad. Ch. XX.
The very “marks” on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Tramp Abroad. Ch. XX.
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.
Dryden—Third Satire of Persius. L. 35.
There’s a joy without canker or cark,
There’s a pleasure eternally new,
’Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that’s ancient and blue;
Unchipp’d, all the centuries through
It has pass’d, since the chime of it rang,
And they fashion’d it, figures and hue,
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Here’s a pot with a cot in a park,
In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
Lived, died, and were changed into two
Bright birds that eternally flew
Through the boughs of the May, as they sang;
’Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Andrew Lang—Ballade of Blue China.
Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:
So spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
For some must follow, and some command,
Though all are made of clay!
Longfellow—Keramos. L. 1.
Figures that almost move and speak.
Longfellow—Keramos. L. 236.
And yonder by Nankin, behold!
The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old,
Uplifting to the astonished skies
Its ninefold painted balconies,
With balustrades of twining leaves,
And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves
Hang porcelain bells that all the time
Ring with a soft, melodious chime;
While the whole fabric is ablaze
With varied tints, all fused in one
Great mass of color, like a maze
Of flowers illumined by the sun.
Longfellow—Keramos. L. 336.
Said one among them: “Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta’en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.”
Omar Khayyam—Rubaiyat. St. 84. FitzGerald’s trans.
All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?
Omar Khayyam—Rubaiyat. St. 87. FitzGerald’s trans.
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
Romans. IX. 21.