Burden not thyself above thy power while thou livest; and have no fellowship with one that is mightier and richer than thyself: for how agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? for if the one be smitten against the other, it shall be broken.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Ecclesiasticus13:2.

Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  Grip, the raven. Barnaby Rudge, ch.17.

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe"  le¤   o  u' nous battons des me¤  lodies a'   faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e¤  toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

-Flaubert, Gustave
  Madame Bovary, pt.1, ch.12.

Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing that Jesus really would've liked would be the guy that plays the kettle drums in the orchestra.

-Salinger,J(erome) D(avid)
The Catcher in the Rye, ch.18.

And besides, Mrs Forthby in the flesh was a different kettle of fish to Mrs Forthby in his fantasies. In the latter she had a multitude of perverse inclinations, which corresponded exactly with his own unfortunate requirements, while possessing a discretion that would have done credit to aTrappist nun. In the flesh she was disappointingly different.

-Sharpe,Tom (Thomas Ridley)
  Blott on the Landscape, ch.3.