Quotes & Sayings About Anvil

Palestine is the anvil of our souls. — Clovis Maksoud

I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people's virtues. — Freya Stark

I keep waiting, like in the cartoons, for an anvil to drop on my head. — Angie Harmon

Growth chestnuts have to be placed on the unyielding anvil of biophysical realities and then crushed with the hammer of moral argument. — Herman E. Daly

Poetry is no less than this:
An unexpected workplace kiss
The brandy in the spirit cage
A salve upon our wounded age
That lustful swell, the secret damp
The yellow of the attic lamp
The drifting, smoky, hazel haze
Of wooded hills on autumn days
Between the thoughts of summer lost
And anvil of the winter frost — Martin Newell

The Bible stands apart from all other books, and has survived and will survive all the attacks of its enemies. It is like the electric torch that shines over the water of New York Bay, struck by the wing of many a seabird that dashes against it in its reckless flight, but still shining on unmoved while the foolish and reckless assailant falls bleeding and wounded at its feet. It is an anvil which has worn out many a hammer of hostile criticism, while the anvil still remains unshaken amid the wreck of all that have assailed it. — A.B. Simpson

Every man who strikes blows for power, for influence, for institutions, for the right, must be just as good an anvil as he is a hammer. — J.G. Holland

Snowmageddon.
Dirty glacial clouds hammered the city's anvil. On the District of Columbia's northwestern edge, gusts of snow rolled across the Park Road Bridge like volcanic ash. — Simon Conway

A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard. — John Webster

The anvil breaks a legion of hammers - by quietly bearing their blows. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A misunderstanding?" Elizabeth echoed. "With an anvil?"
"Oh, stop," Harriet admonished her. "I think he looks very dashing."
"As if he dashed into an anvil. — Julia Quinn

Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases. — Anne Bradstreet

Entrepreneurship is when an individual retrieves a red hot idea from the creativity furnace without the constraint of the heat of lean resources, and with each persistent blow of the innovation hammer shapes the still malleable idea against the anvil of passion, vision, insight, strategy, and principles to forge a fitting vessel of a creative concern. — Amah Lambert

My kinfolks thought more about character than about culture. They said culture could be acquired but character had to be formed. Character had to be hammered into shape like hot iron on an anvil. It had to be molded in the most exact and unrelenting form. — Ben Robertson

Those who will find here a hold for their souls, an anvil for their hands, and vitality for their hearts, will build both their lives and the land. — Berl Katznelson

Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr'd the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. — William Shakespeare

Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders. — Gustave Flaubert

It is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about. — George Orwell

A hand landed on his shoulder like an anvil. "How'd you like to stay for dinner?"
Butch looked up. The guy was wearing a baseball cap and had some kind of marking - was that a tattoo, on his face?
"How'd you like to be dinner?" said another one, who looked like some kind of model. — J.R. Ward

Julie crossed her arms. "I'm serious. Flat Finn can't possibly go to school with her, right?"
"He already went to Brandeis so, no, he doesn't need to repeat seventh grade. Although they did make him take a bunch of tests in order to qualify out. He barely passed the oral exams, though, because the instructors found him withholding and tight-lipped. It's a terribly biased system, but at least he passed and won't have to suffer through the school's annual reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. He has a pilgrim phobia."
"Funny. Really, what's the deal with Flat Finn?"
"After an unfortunate incident involving Wile E. Coyote and an anvil, Three Dimensional Finn had to change his name. — Jessica Park

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace. — Julia Ward Howe

Kaz rapped his cane on the stone floor. He was standing in the doorway to the tomb. "If everyone is done cuddling, we have a job to do."
"Hold up," said Jesper, arm still slung around Inej. "We're not talking about the job until we figure out what those things were on the Stave."
"What things?" asked Inej.
"Did you miss half the Stave blowing up?"
"We saw the bomb at the White Rose go off," said Inej, "and then we heard another explosion."
"At the Anvil," said Nina.
"After that," Inej said, "we ran."
Jesper nodded sagely. "That was your big mistake. If you'd stuck around, you could have nearly been killed by a Shu guy with wings. — Leigh Bardugo

Hasten slowly, and without losing heart, put your work twenty times upon the anvil.
[Fr., Hatez-vous lentement; et, sans perdre courage,
Vingt fois sur le metier remettez votre ouvrage.] — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

And take back ill-polished stanzas to the anvil. — Horace

Hope doesn't float. Hope is an anchor forged from the nails that pierced Him and the iron-will that held Him to the cross, made Him stay the course, and drove Him to live out His extreme devotion to His Father's will. His back became the anvil on which God forged our redemption. Jesus is our only hope. — Lori Stanley Roeleveld

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly. — Robertson Davies

Life's a forge! Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You'll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered! More labor than luck. Face the pounding, don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well against any hammer and anvil. — Lloyd Alexander

Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all England. — Thomas Malory

Thank God I didn't have to see his smug face. Sometimes, I wished I had a pie that I could smash into it. Well, if by pie I meant anvil, then yes. I smiled at the visual. I really was sick. — Emily Cyr

Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth and what flies up, though it be but a spark, will have light. — Pindar

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

All creatures on Earth have been hammered on the anvil of its gravity, for example, which influences size and morphology. So I am sceptical about finding armoured reptiles who can fly and spout flames. — Terry Pratchett

Fucking Hallmark never wrote anything for how I felt then. When Metallica and the rest of the metal community pitched in to pay for Acrassicauda, the Iraqi heavy metal band, to move to the US is the only thing that comes close. And maybe the late-breaking success of Anvil. I had a toasty heart, especially after I got called back to pick up first prize for Miss Frizz. Ah, never mind. You know what I'm saying. — Susan Juby

Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture It amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity. — Paramahansa Yogananda

One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines. — Emile Zola

What the hammer? What the Chains?
In what furnace was thy brain?
Where the anvil? What dread grasp?
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? — William Blake

Bobby's eyes widened. Then he swallowed like there was an anvil in his throat.
"You want me ... "
She waited for him to continue but he didn't seem capable. So she shifted and the pain brought him back from wherever his glazed gaze had taken him.
"You want me to rip your underwear off?"
Given the need to clamp her thighs together, she didn't care how he worded it. She nodded.
"I think I've died and gone to Heaven," he murmured.
"You will if you don't watch it, Wichowski. Just ... reach under ... — Dee Tenorio

Steer your boat with justice: forge
A tongue on truth's anvil. — Pindar

When you leave the familiar and enter the unknown, your fear becomes refined by experience and hammered into tools of survival on the anvil of anxiety. — T.D. Jakes

Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil. — Elizabeth Haydon

I reach up to brush my hair back out of my eyes so I can look around and attempt to determine what the hell is going on. The only three things that I know for certain took place last night are that one
small elves climbed up my body and tied my hair into a mass of tiny knots, two
I must have slept with my mouth open because something crawled into it and died and three
I was sucked through a vortex into some animated world where an anvil was dropped on my head. — Katja Millay

Now it was winter. He hated the damp of Paris. "Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!" Jefferson wrote in 1785.48 "I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil." As much as Jefferson loved France, residence abroad gave him a greater appreciation for his own nation. "My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy," Jefferson wrote Monroe.49 "I confess I had no idea of it myself. — Jon Meacham

Point thy tongue on the anvil of truth. — Pindar

Strip by strip the lash carved into Grace's shuddering flesh. My tears were falling by then, heavy drops, joining in the leaf dust with the blood that had begun to trickle from the table. My limbs were so weak that I could not even raise a hand to wipe the mucus that dripped from my nose.
She had been lying with her head faced away from me. She lifted it then, and turned, so that we looked at one another. If an anvil had fallen from the sky at that moment and landed upon me, I could not have felt more crushed.
(pg 39) — Geraldine Brooks

A man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil. — Saint Dominic

The blades sang like the strokes of a hammer on a blacksmith's anvil echoing in the empty churchyard. — Stanley Goldyn

Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver. — Robert Jordan

Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

But then, in Piazza di Carbonara, from stones she moved on to weapons, and it became the place where men fought to the last drop of blood. Beggars and gentlemen and princes hurried to see people killing each other in revenge. When some handsome youth fell, pierced by a blade beaten on the anvil of death, immediately beggars, bourgeois citizens, kings and queens offered applause that rose to the stars. — Elena Ferrante

... responsibilities are the anvil on which a man is forged. — Terry Pratchett

We are not taught that hardship is the anvil upon which we are beaten into beauty. We are not taught that some of our greatest moments are some of our most difficult. — Daniel Gillies

As iron is fashioned by fire and on the anvil, so in the fire of suffering and under the weight of trials, our souls receive that form which our Lord desires them to have. — Madeleine Sophie Barat

I will not move an inch; I've become an anvil to endure every act of striking — Munia Khan

Outside the windows, the land was as flat, as interesting, as the head of an anvil, and the shadows of the corn advanced like the rifle barrels of an approaching army. — Stephen Wright

The country blacksmith who employs no journeyman is never conscious of any conflict between the capital invested in his anvil, hammer and bellows, and the labor he performs with them, because in fact, there is none. — Leland Stanford

The Church of Christ is an anvil which has worn out many hammers. Our opponents may boast of their strength, but they do not realize what they have challenged. — John Buchan

Never was the victory of patience more complete than in the early church. The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers, which are always repulsed by the anvil. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance. — Aeschylus

What happened to your face?" Harriet asked.
"It was a misunderstanding," Daniel said smoothly, wondering how long it might take for his bruises to heal. He did not think he was particularly vain, but the questions were growing tiresome.
"A misunderstanding?" Elizabeth echoed. "With an anvil?"
"Oh, stop," Harriet admonished her. "I think he looks very dashing."
"As if he dashed into an anvil."
"Pay no attention," Harriet said to him. "She lacks imagination. — Julia Quinn

Stand firm and immovable as an anvil when it is beaten upon. — Ignatius Of Loyola

There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn't much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn't want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn't one of the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn't clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn't happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn't worry about it. It didn't define me. We're always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new purpose. — John William Tuohy

Who so pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil is trueborn King of all Britain. — Rosemary Sutcliff

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things. — Henry Ward Beecher

There's a saying that goes, 'The universe gives you a whisper, then a nudge, then a push and then an anvil on your head. — Sara Genn

We are to regard the mind, not as a piece of iron to be laid upon the anvil and hammered into any shape, nor as a block of marble in which we are to find the statue by removing the rubbish, nor as a receptacle into which knowledge may be poured; but as a flame that is to be fed, as an active being that must be strengthened to think and to feel
and to dare, to do, and to suffer. — Mark Hopkins

Bloody hell, what did he hit me with? An anvil?"
"His fist."
"You should put that fool in a bear-baiting pit. You'd make a fortune." Dougal struggled to rise.
Sophia helped him on one side, Mary slipping under his other arm.
The wind swirled a bit harder, sending dust into the air.
"Heavens!" Mary said, glancing over their heads at the sky. "That's the third thunderhead as has passed this way today."
Sophia turned. A huge bank of thunderclouds hung overhead, roiling as if alive.
"We should get inside," she said uneasily.
Dougal didn't even glance at the clouds as he held a hand over his bruised eye and cheek. "Bloody hell, I can barely see. — Karen Hawkins

And as any man does when faced with the raw terror of emotion, he surrendered to his wife and buried his thoughts below the anvil of his heart. — Jason Mott

DARE you see a soul at the white heat?
Then crouch within the door.
Red is the fire's common tint;
But when the vivid ore
Has sated flame's conditions, 5
Its quivering substance plays
Without a color but the light
Of unanointed blaze.
Least village boasts its blacksmith,
Whose anvil's even din 10
Stands symbol for the finer forge
That soundless tugs within,
Refining these impatient ores
With hammer and with blaze,
Until the designated light 15
Repudiate the forge. — Emily Dickinson

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living. — Charles R. Swindoll

We are a biological species arising from Earth's biosphere as one adapted species among many; and however splendid our languages and cultures, however rich and subtle our minds, however vast our creative powers, the mental process is the product of a brain shaped by the hammer of natural selection upon the anvil of nature. — Edward O. Wilson

The enemy hates the ego, which the seeker wants to kill; thus, like the anvil to the goldsmith, he is actually a friend. — Ramana Maharshi

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect. — Steve Rushin

People coming away from a session with Dr. S. usually looked as if they had had fifty minutes on the anvil with an apprentice blacksmith. — Margaret Halsey

But if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as happens in neurosis. Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, at least let it be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too - as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an 'individual.' This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. — C. G. Jung

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smitting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Subjective truth is an oxymoron; objective truth is redundant. Subjective truth is feathers in a wind tunnel, blowing anywhere and everywhere. Objective truth is an anvil, bolted to the floor of the wind tunnel. Subjective truth is your truth and my truth; objective truth is Jesus Christ - immovable, immutable. — Ron Brackin

Suffer or triumph, be the hammer or the anvil. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil. — Dorothy Dunnett

I had lost too much of the heart and all the faith needed to stay afloat in a job where every human encounter felt like an anvil strung around my neck just when I thought I was nearing the shore. — Dinaw Mengestu

The Stones This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. The flat blue sky-circle Flew off like the hat of a doll When I fell out of the light. I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard. The mother of pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones of the belly were peaceable, The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing. — Sylvia Plath

Instead of being overwhelmed by the universe, I think that perhaps one of the deepest experiences a scientist can have, almost approaching a religious awakening, is to realize that we are children of the stars, and that our minds are capable of understanding the universal laws that they obey. The atoms within our bodies were forged on the anvil of nucleo-synthesis within an exploding star aeons before the birth of the solar system. Our atoms are older than the mountains. We are literally made of star dust. Now these atoms, in turn, have coalesced into intelligent beings capable of understanding the universal laws governing that event. — Michio Kaku

As for the coyote, he was nothing like his cartoon icon. He was sleek, fast, healthy and apparently without an anvil or Acme product of any kind. — Doug Fine

Because it is on the anvil of pain that the gods forge heroes. — C.L. Werner

We could use all the blessings we could get. The impact of what we were about to do hit me like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote's head. We were heading out to stop Satan's son and save the world from certain destruction.
Piece of cake. — Terri Clark

The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed. — Charles Spurgeon

In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil. — Emily Dickinson

The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading. — Alfred Nobel

... it is to your credit that you recognize that if he was a monster then it was other monstrous things which made him so. The iron forged on the anvil cannot be blamed for the hammer... — Terry Pratchett

You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

& she, armed with both & abandoning the joys of reason that had meant so much to her as well as me, made a suitably advantageous marriage with an ironmonger with a face like an anvil & a soul like a slag, & so I never saw her freckles fade, her auburn hair dull, never had to watch our love turn to that non-colour, white.
-pg 115 — Richard Flanagan

Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without the least quivering of his own. — Herman Melville

Nothing can kill the future dreams and goals of a new graduate than 50k of debt like an anvil over your head. I got to Indiana University not because I visited the campus and loved everything about it. I picked Indiana University because I saw a list of the top 10 business schools and it was the cheapest. — Mark Cuban

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream
Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.
Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam
The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.
'Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.
Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom
Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower
Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.
For every pang, new beauty, and new power,
Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth's wrong
Beat on that iron and ring back in song. — Alfred Noyes

I wait until an investment idea is so good, it hits me over the head like an anvil. — Joel Greenblatt

It is a fantastic initiative by the ministry to develop Aakash Tablet, a mobile device that can be utilised by students anywhere. It was successfully tried out. The second and third versions have come out and the fourth version is on the anvil. — Pallam Raju

Our character was being forged on the anvil of the difficult experiences we were facing. We knew that if we remained committed to God's purposes for us, we would be prepared to face the future. — George Foster

But why can't we just order what we need? Or buy it?"
Myrnin flicked the silver ring on his right hand into the bars of his cell, setting up a metallic ringing. "None of that. Modern children are fools, slaves to the work of others, dependent for everything. Not you. You will learn how to build your tools as well as use them."
"You want me to be an engineer?"
"Is it not a useful thing for one who studies physics to understand such practical applications?"
She stared at him doubtfully. "You're not going to make me get an anvil and make my own screwdrivers or anything, are you?"
Myrnin smiled slowly. "What a good idea! I'll consider it. — Rachel Caine