Quotes & Sayings About Hammers

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

Consider this: when you stand at the entry to a steel factory, you can make out through the smoke some men, some metal, the fires. The furnaces roar, the hammers crash; and the metalworkers who forge ingots, weapons, tools, and so on are completely ignorant of the real uses to which their products will be put. The workers can only refer to their products by conventional names. Well, that's where we all stand, all of us! Nobody can see the real character of what he creates because every knife blade may become a dagger, and the use to which an object is put changes both its name and its nature. Only our ignorance shields us from terrible responsibilities. — Villiers De L'Isle-Adam

We will respond, even in the face of irony and slander, with the sweetness of love. We can afford to take this attitude because good anvils do not fear the blows of many hammers. — Richard Wurmbrand

Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah. — Adam Levin

He trusts Malcolm, but Malcolm doesn't want trust: he wants someone to show the silvery, stripey marble he's found from a small quarry outside Izmir and argue about how much of it is too much; and to make smell the cypress from Gifu that he's sourced for the bathroom tub; and to examine the objects - hammers; wrenches; pliers - he's embedded like trilobites in the poured concrete floors. — Hanya Yanagihara

If I had time and a hammer, I'd track down every bootleg copy and smash it. — George Lucas

I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out. — William Shakespeare

Fabio Capello needs to nail his hammers to the mast. — Andy Townsend

On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down below, on the sidewalk, no one. This spreading silence increased the tranquility of things. In the distance, the caulkers' hammers tamped the hulls, and a heavy breeze brought the smell of tar. — Gustave Flaubert

Rude cross lay flat upon the barren earth and on it was bound a man - half-naked, wild of aspect with his corded limbs, glaring eyes and shock of tangled hair. His executioners were Roman soldiers, and with heavy hammers they prepared to pin the victim's hands and feet to the wood with iron spikes. — H.P. Lovecraft

What business, said Priscilla's look more plainly than any words, what business had people to walk into other people's cottages in such a manner? She stood quite still, and scrutinized Mrs. Morrison with the questioning expression she used to find so effective in Kunitz days when confronted by a person inclined to forget which, exactly, was his proper place. But Mrs. Morrison knew nothing of Kunitz, and the look lost half its potency without its impressive background. Besides, the lady was not one to notice things so slight as looks; to keep her in her proper place you would have needed sledge-hammers. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

It often takes two to do a good painting - one to paint it, and another to rap the painter smartly with a hammer before he or she can ruin it. — Richard Schmid

I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better. — Harlan Coben

Scottish football is full of hammer throwers. — Graeme Souness

Part of our skittishness about Christian perfection is linguistic confusion. The English word "perfect" has absorbed the Greek notion of "teleos". When the Greeks looked at a building's blueprint, they pictured the building whole and complete. They envisioned the blueprint finished down to the bathroom tile and announced, "Ah, this is perfect." The problem is that "teleos" suggests that perfection is something we can build or achieve. The Hebrews looked at the same blueprint more practically. They envisioned the process of building from hard hats to hammers, from scaffolding to skylights. "Ah," the Hebrews said. "This is perfect." The Hebrews and the early Christians understood perfection as a process, not a product. Our identity as Christians depends upon life lived in relationship with God, not upon the quality of our achievements. — Kenda Creasy Dean

I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It's down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it's airtight, soundproofed and padlocked. It's where I keep the thoughts I don't know what to do with, that could get me into trouble. Eating Unseelie hammers on the inside of that lid incessantly. I try to keep kissing Barrons in that box, too, but it gets out sometimes. — Karen Marie Moning

Hey, what's that thing where you hold the gun sideways?" he said, grinning.
D snorted. "That's called being a punk-ass punk," he said. "Might look good in rap videos. You see anybody holdin' a gun like that ya know they're cake, 'cause they're more interested in what the gun looks like in their hand than what it can do, and they're probly dumber'n a fuckin' bag a hammers too. — Jane Seville

Getting to play with Thor's hammer while he stroked my bow — Jeremy Renner

One half of my head, from the top of my skull to the cleft of my jaw, hammers, bangs, sizzles while the other half, serene and content, looks on at the agony next door. — Rudyard Kipling

We've dug our holes and hallowed caves Put goblin foes in shallow graves This day our work is just begun In the mines where silver rivers run
Beneath the stone the metal gleams Torches shine on silver streams Beyond the eyes of he spying sun In the mines where silver rivers run
The hammers chime on Mithral pure As dwarven mines in days of yore A craftsman's work is never done In the mines where silver rivers run
To dwarven gods we sing or praise Put another orc in a shallow grave We know our work has just began In the mines where silver rivers run — R.A. Salvatore

The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world. — Tom Robbins

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and when you're a left-wing sorehead, everything is an occasion to damn the rich. — George Scialabba

Even now, that day reminds me that raindrops are stronger than hammers. — Marilyn Hilton

A good leader has a plan that consists of changing simple pictures. Just because a group of people has a bunch of boards, hammers, and nails does not mean that they are building a house or even anything recognizable. Sometimes leaders think they are doing their job just because there is a lot of hammering going on. As a society we like the sound of hammering, but we are uncomfortable with the sound of thinking, which is silence. — Laurie Beth Jones

No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung,Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.Majestic silence. — Reginald Heber

My great-grandfather Melvin had been a carpenter - so was my father - and they taught me the value of tools: saws, hammers, chisels, files and rulers. It all dealt with conciseness and precision. It eliminated guesswork. One has to know his tools, so he doesn't work against himself. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. — Wassily Kandinsky

When all you own is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail. — Abraham Maslow

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

[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them. — Charles Dickens

Walk down a hallway, end up in a ballroom, double glass doors to a subway station, third exit on the left goes to a hardware store that sells only hammers. No screwdrivers, no chisels, not even any nails - just hammers. You'd be surprised how many problems you can solve with a hammer if you really put your mind to it. — Stefan Gagne

If my only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. — Sholem Asch

The good nail will do its job regardless what kind of hammer comes its way and what kind of surface it sits on. — Rita Zahara

But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen. — Rudyard Kipling

I think we all get our own bag of hammers. We all get our own Parkinson's. We all have our own thing. I think that we'll look at it through the filter of that experience, and we'll say, "Yeah, I need to laugh at my stuff, too." — Michael J. Fox

Temperance is the wisdom to know that not every constructive job requires a hammer. — Wes Fesler

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

When I read the script sometimes, it's like 'Christ! Enough!' I can't sleep at night sometimes. There's the occasional script that just hammers you, that you can't shower off. — Mariska Hargitay

Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives? — John D. MacDonald

Hark to the clinking of the hammers! Hark to the driving of the nails! What fun to build a gallows, the cure for all that ails! — Ransom Riggs

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site. — Frank Lloyd Wright

We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it's not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out. — Bill Paxton

Lust is a dangerous thing. It can seduce your mind and lead it blindfolded to the cliff that will be its demise. Nathan takes me to that cliff, my body bending and molding beneath his, my heart coming up for air in between soft caresses with his mouth while his cock hammers out a slick, rapid motion. — Alessandra Torre

If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses — John Ruskin

Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care. — Paul Bloom

Holly slides off the chairlift like a gymnast, and I slide off like a sack of hammers. — David Mitchell

The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon Shakespeare and his characters. Cleopatra shudders at the thought that "mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapor." (Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.) — William Shakespeare

I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstuck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.Every one of them had a good knife in his pocket, sharp, the blades whetted narrow and concave, the horn of the handle worn smooth. — Wendell Berry

Fat Charlie wondered what Rosie's mother would usually hear in a church. Probably just cries of "Back! Foul best of Hell!" followed by gasps of "Is it alive?" and a nervous inquiry as to whether anybody had remembered to bring the stakes and hammers. — Neil Gaiman

Hammer your thoughts into unity. — William Butler Yeats

Don't expect to make a living on it. Be able to hammer a nail or do retail, doing your music on the side! — Jake Holmes

a collection that included, among other items, an Allen wrench set, some pliers, a power drill, several clamps, some hacksaws, an impact-wrench set, a brace of cold-tolerant bungie cords, assorted files and rasps and planes, a crescent-wrench set, a crimper, five hammers, some hemostats, three hydraulic jacks, a bellows, several sets of screwdrivers, drills and bits, a portable compressed gas cylinder, a box of plastic explosives and shape charges, a tape measure, a giant Swiss Army knife, tin snips, tongs, tweezers, three vises, a wire stripper, X-acto knives, a pick, a bunch of mallets, a nut driver set, hose clamps, a set of end mills, a set of jeweler's screwdrivers, a magnifying glass, all kinds of tape, a plumber's bob and ream, a sewing kit, scissors, sieves, a lathe, levels of all sizes, long-nosed pliers, vise-grip pliers, a tap-and-die set, three shovels, a compressor, a generator, a welding-and-cutting set, a wheelbarrow - and so on. And — Kim Stanley Robinson

He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up the sides of skyscrapers. He was the Hulk when angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone. As I watched I thought of what Grandma Lynn liked to say when Lindsey and I rolled our eyes or grimaced behind her back. Watch out what faces you make. You'll freeze that way. — Alice Sebold

Flying off the handle sometimes causes hammers and humans to lose their heads, as well as their effectiveness. — William Arthur Ward

Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real. — Peter Murphy

If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it. — Alexander MacLaren

Do not focus your thoughts among the confused wheels of secondary causes, as -'O if this had been, this had not followed!' Look up to the master motion of the first wheel. In building, we see hewn stones and timbers under hammers and axes, yet the house in this beauty we do not see at the present, but it is in the mind of this builder. We also see unbroken clods, furrows, and stones, but we do not see the summer lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden. Even so we do not presently see the outcome of God's decrees with his blessed purpose. It is hard to believe when his purpose is hidden and under the ground. Providence has a thousand keys to deliver his own even when all hope is gone. Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's. — Samuel Rutherford

Admire the diamond that can bear the hits of a hammer. Many deceptive preachers, when critically examined, turn out to be false. — Kabir

Oh, a passing, skeptical kind of interest. I'm a hammer-and-nails kind of guy. — Nick Cave

When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails. — Robert Kagan

So it has come, the day of testing. Without warning, without fanfare, it is here, and he is in the middle of it. In his chest his heart hammers so hard that it too, in its dumb way, must know. How will they stand up to the testing, he and his heart? — J.M. Coetzee

The world could not long ignore a holy church. The church is not despised because it is holy: it is despised because it is not holy enough. There is not enough difference between the people inside the church and those outside to be impressive. A church in which saints were as common as now they are rare would convict the world, if only by contrast. Sanctity cannot be ignored. Even a little bit is potent. So far from the gates of hell prevailing against it, it hammers on their triple steel. — Bill Vaughan

I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything. — James Baldwin

I carve stone. I've got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees. — Peter Weir

A furious Peeta hammers Haymitch with the atrocity he could become party to, but I can feel Haymitch watching me. This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me.
"I'm with the Mockingjay," he says. — Suzanne Collins

Kneecaps only exist to get hit with claw-hammers; grace only exists to be fallen from. — Glen Duncan

I was never an Angry Young Man. I am angry only when I hit my thumb with a hammer. — Kingsley Amis

Helgarson won't tell me, but it must have been bad. His fangs pop out if you just say 'Thor' aloud, and he hunts carpenters simply because they use hammers. — Kevin Hearne

Back of the beating hammer By which the steel is wrought, Back of the workshop's clamor The seeker may find the thought. — Berton Braley

There's two kinds of people in this world.There's hammers and nails ...
You decide what to be .. — Will Smith

The hammers must be swung in cadence, when more than one is hammering the iron. — Giordano Bruno

It's fine to be sexy, but you can be sexy without licking a hammer! — Katie Uhlaender

What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth ? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad. — Dave Barry

O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman - he purposes a crop. — Samuel Rutherford

All this is, is a nine hundred dollar hammer. — Joe Teti

The simplest way to prepare Dungeness crabs is to boil them in the shell and set them in front of your guests with crab crackers or crab hammers, cocktail forks, and plenty of napkins. — Tom Douglas

I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal. — Stephen Jay Gould

Opportunity knocks at every man's door once. On some men's door it hammers till it breaks down the door and then it goes in and wakes him up if he's asleep, and ever afterward it works for him as a night watchman. — Finley Peter Dunne

Treat your past as a book that you learn from instead of a hammer that you beat yourself up about. — Bill Whittle

The hardest part about being in radiohead is being inside a giant head that is a radio. Ha ha, little english humour there, or is it a hammer? — Thom Yorke

I've come off horses and fought in medieval battles using axes, hammers and swords as well as fists. Getting your teeth knocked out is an occupational hazard. — James Cosmo

I'm named Bella," the girl told Gendry. "For the battle. I bet I could ring your bell, too. You want to?"
"No," he said gruffly.
"I bet you do." She ran a hand along his arm. "I don't cost nothing to friends of Thoros and the lighting lord."
"No, I said." Gendry rose abruptly and stalked away from the table out into the night.
Bella turn to Arya. "Don't he like girls?"
Arya shrugged. "He's just stupid. He likes to polish helmets and beat on swords with hammers. — George R R Martin

Life is malleable and the hammer is desire. — Anya Seton

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. — Barack Obama

Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times. — Robert Benchley

Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment. — Charles Dickens

Again, this week as I walked on Broadway, in front of giant photographs of voluptuous supermodels at a Victoria Secret mega-store, who was rebuilding the sidewalks? With sweaty headbands, ripped-up jeans, and dust on their brown faces? Their muscled hands quivered as they worked the jack-hammers and lugged the concrete chunks into dump trucks. Two men from Guanajuato. Undocumented workers. They both shook my hand vigorously, as if they were relieved I wasn't an INS officer.
I imagined how much money Victoria Secret was making off these poor bastards. I wondered why passersby didn't see what was in front of their faces. We use these workers. We profit from them. In the shadows, they work to the bone, for pennies. And it's so easy to blame them for everything and nothing simply because they are powerless, and dark-skinned,and speak with funny accents. Illegal is illegal. It is a phrase, shallow and cruel, that should prompt any decent American to burn with anger. — Sergio Troncoso

The Soviet Union could not exist without the image of the empire. The image of the empire could not exist without the image of force. The USSR ended the moment the first hammer pounded the Berlin Wall. — Boris Yeltsin

Sometimes, when we train, we simply have to go out to meet the Man with the Hammer — Laurent Fignon

You don't have to just hit nails with hammers, you know; you can use a hammer to beat somebody's brains in, to make armor or break a car window. You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch but the best crutch I could have. — Stephen Bruner

As hard as the diamonds in your smile,
the wind carries its hammers with no hands
and sustains a moan with no mouth,
seems to cradle solitude in its rough arms like firewood
to be burned in my house as it passes through
and asks, Where does she sparkle from? — B.J. Ward

Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer. — Henry Miller

There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense. — Hunter S. Thompson

Writing is the hammer & chisel that breaks down the established way of thinking. A concrete event, then an abstraction. An image, then a thought. Finally, writing builds another establishment with the fragments. — Diane Glancy

It is as if a man were asked, 'What is the use of a hammer?' and answered, 'To make hammers'; and when asked, 'And of those hammers, what is the use?' answered, 'To make hammers again'. Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life. — G.K. Chesterton

If my wheel comes off and I hit the fence real hard, I get to whack every damn one of you with a hammer. — Dale Earnhardt Jr.

We live without feeling the country beneath our feet,
our words are inaudible from ten steps away.
Any conversation, however brief,
gravitates, gratingly, toward the Kremlin's mountain man.
His greasy fingers are thick as worms,
his words weighty hammers slamming their target.
His cockroach moustache seems to snicker,
and the shafts of his high-topped boots gleam.
Amid a rabble of scrawny-necked chieftains,
he toys with the favors of such homunculi.
One hisses, the other mewls, one groans, the other weeps;
he prowls thunderously among them, showering them with scorn.
Forging decree after decree, like horseshoes,
he pitches one to the belly, another to the forehead,
a third to the eyebrow, a fourth in the eye.
Every execution is a carnival
that fills his broad Ossetian chest with delight. — Osip Mandelstam

Without compunction, pity or shame,
they've built towering walls around me.
Desperate, I sit and think one thing:
alone here this fate confounds me.
For there were many things I'd hoped to do out there.
With all the construction, how was I not aware?
Yet the crack and clang of hammers I never once heard.
Imperceptibly they've confined me from the outside world.
("Walls") — Constantine P. Cavafy