“I am a humble artist
moulding my earthly clod,
adding my labour to nature's,
simply assisting God.
Not that my labour is needed,
yet somehow I understand,
my Maker has deemed it that I too should have
Unmoulded clay in my hand.”
Simply Assisting God
Grooks
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Piet Hein37
Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet 1905–1996Related quotes
Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath
Letter X: Reply to the Edinburgh Reviewers, Miscellaneous works of the late Thomas Young https://archive.org/details/miscellaneouswo01youngoog (1855), p. 215
Frances Cornford (1886–1960) English poet
"Epitaph for a Reviewer", line 1; from Collected Poems (London: Cresset Press, 1954) p. 112.
Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Preface, 2nd edition (22 July 1848)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
1 March 1834.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word, an arguer, would not only not understand me, but would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can take no interest whatever in hearing or saying any thing merely as a fact — merely as having happened. It must refer to something within me before I can regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is always energic — I don't mean energetic; I require in every thing what, for lack of another word, I may call propriety, — that is, a reason why the thing is at all, and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at another time.
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
On his 75th birthday (1947), in reply to a question on whether he was afraid of death, quoted in the N. Y. Times Magazine on November 1, 1964, p. 40 according to Quote It Completely! (1998), Gerhart, Wm. S. Hein Publishing, p. 262 ISBN 1575884003
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
The Great Queen is Amused.
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (1982)
William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist
‘To Mr. Attwood’, Political Register (5 May 1821), p. 343
1820s
William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt
Response after hearing he had been declared an outlaw by Philip II, as quoted in The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1859) by John Lothrop Motley
Context: I am in the hands of God, my worldly goods and my life have long since been dedicated to his service. He will dispose of them as seems best for his glory and my salvation. … Would to God that my perpetual banishment or even my death could bring you a true deliverance from so many calamities. Oh, how consoling would be such banishment — how sweet such a death! For why have I exposed my property? Was it that I might enrich myself? Why have I lost my brothers? Was it that I might find new ones? Why have I left my son so long a prisoner? Can you give me another? Why have I put my life so often in danger? What reward can I hope after my long services, and the almost total wreck of my earthly fortunes, if not the prize of having acquired, perhaps at the expense of my life, your liberty? If then, my masters, you judge that my absence or my death can serve you, behold me ready to obey. Command me — send me to the ends of the earth — I will obey. Here is my head, over which no prince, no monarch, has power but yourselves. Dispose of it for your good, for the preservation of your republic, but if you judge that the moderate amount of experience and industry which is in me, if you judge that the remainder of my property and of my life can yet be of service to you, I dedicate them afresh to you and to the country.