Anvils Quotes

• For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike.

  Edwin Markham

  Inspirational, Preparation, Hammers

  Edwin Markham (1920). “Gates of Paradise and Other Poems: The Fourth Volume of Verse”

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• In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.

  George Orwell

  Real, Hammers, Break

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.159, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The anvil is not afraid of the hammer.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Hammers, Not Afraid

  Charles Spurgeon (2012). “John Ploughman's Talks”, p.77, Whitaker House

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• Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.

  Robert Jordan

  Lying, Iron, Hammers

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• Sometimes we are so busy being the hammer or the anvil, that we forget who really needs the shaping.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Needs, Hammers, Sometimes

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• You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Success, War, Suffering

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• The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Men, Opinion, Word Of God

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• It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

  Emily Dickinson

  Hammers

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• Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Government, President, Debate

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• A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Family, Everyday, Principles

  Charles R. Swindoll (1979). “Standing Out: Being Real in an Unreal World”, Multnomah

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• As great Pythagoras of yore,
  Standing beside the blacksmith's door,
  And hearing the hammers, as they smote
  The anvils with a different note,
  Stole from the varying tones, that hung
  Vibrant on every iron tongue,
  The secret of the sounding wire.
  And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Iron, Doors, Secret

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1848). “Poems”, p.105

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• In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Leadership, Work, Character

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1839). “Hyperion: A Romance”, p.203

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• We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  War, Adversity, Religion

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

  Elizabeth Haydon

  People, Steel, Rings

  Elizabeth Haydon (2006). “The Floating Island”, p.160, Macmillan

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• 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 desires.

  Anne Bradstreet

  Men, Iron, Grace

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• Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils.

  Jim Butcher

  Mean, Night, Turkeys

  Jim Butcher (2004). “Blood Rites: Book six of The Dresden Files”, p.113, Penguin

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• 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

  Country, Hammers, Facts

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• One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

  Emile Zola

  Style, Terrible, Deadline

  "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington, (p. 840), 1999.

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

  Aeschylus

  Fate, Justice, Doe

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• Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Criticism, Hammers, Harsh

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• I would rather be the hammer than the anvil

  Erwin Rommel

  Hammers

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

  Angie Harmon

  Waiting, Cartoon

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• Lay me on an anvil, O God.
  Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.

  Carl Sandburg

  Prayer, Hammers, Steel

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Voltaire

  Men, Hammers, France

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• The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character.

  J. G. Holland

  Character, Power, Two

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