A potter's field or common grave is an American term for a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people. The expression derives from the Bible, referring to a field used for the extraction of potter's clay, which was useless for agriculture but could be used as a burial site.
Famous quotes containing the words potter and/or field:
“At present I feel like a caged animal, bound up by the luxury, comfort and respectability of my position. I can’t get the training that I want without neglecting my duty.”
—Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)
“Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)