Hammer And Anvil Quotes & Sayings

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

For all your years prepare,
And meet them ever alike;
When you are the anvil, bear
When you are the hammer, strike.
— Edwin Markham

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

That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other's throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night. — A. Anatoli Kuznetsov

God shapes us with a hammer of pain on an anvil of duty. I cannot imagine what shape we will be when He is finished. — Tad Williams

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

The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character. — J.G. Holland

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

In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten. — Voltaire

Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

I would rather be the hammer than the anvil — Erwin Rommel

Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. The great fire of Troy from which a fugitive had escaped, taking with him his aged father, his young son, and his household goods, had passed down to us that night in this flaming festival. I thought also, with something like awe, of conflagrations to come. These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night in this flaming festival. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Writing a novel is a bit like making a sword. First, you take all the raw material and melt it down in a crucible, then you take it to the anvil and hammer out as many of the impurities as possible before folding and turning the whole thing over on itself and hammering it out again. The more often you can fold it over and incorporate another layer the stronger it will be. Finally, put an edge on it, give it a handle to show to the world, and the job's done. The result should be something flexible and elegant; perfectly balanced, of suitable length and, above all with a point to it. — Robert Stephen Parry

The anvil is not afraid of the hammer. — Charles Spurgeon

Ordinary effort, ordinary result ... Luck is the residue of design. Be steadfast. The anvil outlasts the hammer. — Ethan Hawke

Sometimes we are so busy being the hammer or the anvil, that we forget who really needs the shaping. — Neal A. Maxwell

In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer ... — George Orwell

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars. — Carl Sandburg

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see? — William Blake

And as soon as you accepted that the man's breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual's symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers's life had consisted of asking questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be obtained, but there are limits to how many fundamental questions you want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn't end till midnight. — Pat Barker

We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission! — Charles Schumer

You are strong, tempered like steel in the fire and by the blows of the hammer of life. Nothing will break you again, only make you stronger and more whole. Perfection is the pride of those who have not lived, who know not these things in their arrogance. They remain the same - raw and without form. The hammer never touches them, and they lie on the shelf, gathering dust, slowly tarnishing and fading and crumbling. the blows of the hammer in the fire refine us into bright shining glory for the roles we play in life - until we are one with the anvil, becoming immune to the hammer's little knocks, and smile at it. — Christina Engela

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

... 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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