“I love the flesh. I'm a pagan. “Who are they who speak evil of the clay? The very stars are made of clay like mine!””
Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard (11 August 1905)
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Jack London 77
American author, journalist, and social activist 1876–1916Related quotes

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter III "Brick" Sec. 1
Context: Bricks... should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, or of fine gravel, because when made of these kinds they are in the first place heavy; and secondly when washed by the rain as they stand in walls, they go to pieces and break up, and the straw in them does not hold together on account of the roughness of the material. They should rather be made of white and chalky or of red clay, or even of a coarse grained gravelly clay. These materials are smooth and therefore durable; they are not heavy to work with, and are readily laid.

“To get wealth and security by guile
Is like one who pours water into a pot of unbaked clay.”
Verse LXVI.10
Tirukkural
“I have hardly touched the clay and I am made of it.”
Casi no he tocado el barro y soy de barro.
Voces (1943)

Rights; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: A white man's government? Well, I am a white man, I believe. Will anybody undertake to teach me what are the antipathies and loathings of white men? What mean whites may or may not like is of small importance. But the generous soul of my race, which has led the van in the great march of liberty and civilization, and whose lofty path is marked by the broken chains of every form of slavery, has an instinctive hatred of injustice, of exclusive privilege, of arrogance, ignorance, and baseness, and an instinctive love of honor, magnanimity and justice. The white soul of my race naturally loves the man, of whatever race or color, who bravely fights and gloriously dies for equal rights, and instinctively loathes every man who, saved by the blood of such heroes, deems himself made of choicer clay. The spirit of caste asks us to believe the outraged race inferior. Inferior? Inferior in what? In sagacity? In fidelity? In nobility of soul? In the prime qualities of manhood? And who are asked to believe this? We? We, hot, panting, exhausted from a fight for our national life in a part of the country where every white face was probably that of an enemy, and every colored face was surely that of a friend. We are asked to say it, whose brothers and sons, escaping from horrible pens of torture and death hundreds of miles from our lines, made their way through swamps and forests, safe from hungry bloodhounds and fiercer men, back to our homes and hearts, only because the men whom in our triumphant fortune we are asked to betray, in our darkest hour of misfortune risked their lives to save ours.

“My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust.”
How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

“Bricks… should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, or of fine gravel”
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter III "Brick" Sec. 1
Context: Bricks... should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, or of fine gravel, because when made of these kinds they are in the first place heavy; and secondly when washed by the rain as they stand in walls, they go to pieces and break up, and the straw in them does not hold together on account of the roughness of the material. They should rather be made of white and chalky or of red clay, or even of a coarse grained gravelly clay. These materials are smooth and therefore durable; they are not heavy to work with, and are readily laid.