Anvil Quotes

Stand like a beaten anvil. ~ Ignatius Bishop And Martyr

On the anvil of August, the city lay paralyzed, stunned into stupidity by the heat. ~ Janet Fitch

Golf puts a man's character on the anvil and his richest qualities - patience, poise, restraint - to the flame. ~ Billy Casper

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

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

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

... 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

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

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

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

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

The voice called his name again and it came through a lot of throat. Steven twisted quickly on his stool.
Just a white wall and, down near the floor, the ventilation grille. Then movement behind the grille and Steven was on his knees, peering through it, pressing his face against the mesh. In there, in the shadows beyond the spill of light from the hall, the outline of an anvil-shaped head swayed gently.
Two eyes blinked limpidly, insolent in their slowness. A dark mass moved forward into the light.
"That Cripps man is going to fuck you up, dude."
It was a cow. Most of the body was below floor level but Steven could tell it was a full grown animal. A sienna Guernsey. He looked closely at the flawless sandy curves of forehead and cheek, at the chocolate darkening of the mouth and nostrils, at the badger rings around the eyes. For an absurd second he thought that if he looked hard enough at it the thing might phase back into his head and disappear.
But it was real and it stayed.
"What … ?"
"Yeah, I'm a cow, man. Touch me."
Steven stuck his fingers through the grille. The cow was a cow, warm and solid. ~ Matthew Stokoe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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

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

When it´s bad I feel like I´ve been hit by an anvil, shattered like cartoon characters but without the instant recovery. That´s the deep pit where I feel all lost and alone. But when it´s good, it´s as if all my nerve endings are deliciously electrified; I´m on fire inside and swept off my feet by the passion and energy that washes over me. That´s the pinnacle where I am truly alive ~ Mary-Elaine Jacobsen

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

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

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

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

Palestine is the anvil of our souls. ~ Clovis Maksoud

The auctioneer turned to face her. He raised his knife again. Kestrel had just enough time to remember the sound of a hammer against anvil, to think of all the weapons Arin had forged, and to realize that if he had wanted to make more on the side it wouldn't have been heard.
The auctioneer advanced on her.
Not hard at all.
"No," said Arin. "She's mine."
The man paused. "What?"
Arin strolled toward them, stepping in the housekeeper's blood. He stood next to the auctioneer, his stance loose and careless. "She's mine. My prize. Payment for services rendered. A spoil of war." Arin shrugged. "Call her what you like. Call her my slave."
Shame poured into Kestrel, as poisonous as anything her friends must have drunk at the ball.
Slowly, the auctioneer said, "I'm a little worried about you, Arin. I think you've lost clarity on the situation."
"Is there something wrong with treating her the way she treated me?"
"No, but--"
"The Valorian army will return. She's the general's daughter. She's too valuable to waste."
The auctioneer sheathed his knife, but Kestrel couldn't sheathe her dread. This sudden alternative to death didn't seem like a better one.
"Just remember what happened to your parents," the auctioneer told Arin. "Remember what Valorian soldiers did to your sister."
Arin's gaze cut to Kestrel. "I do."
"Really? Where were you during the assault on the estate? I expected to find my second-in-command here. Inst ~ Marie Rutkoski

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

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

The Doctor is all of us, he lives and dies as all of us, and we need him to – because no matter the anvil-imagery of the Doctor as Christ, this is actually a far older and far simpler story than that. Everything changes. We all regenerate. I am not the same woman who first saw Rose ascend. Years go by and I become someone new, with the same memories but a new face, a new self. ~ Catherine Valenti

You have to do something," Kestrel had said.
The woman blinked, bleary-eyed.
"Go tell the guards to let Smith out. He's imprisoned in the barracks. He--"
"I know," the woman had said. "He's been released."
"He has? By whom?"
The slave looked away. "It was Rax's decision. He said you could complain to him if you didn't like it."
Those last words sounded like a lie. They didn't even make sense. But the woman patted her hand and said, "I saw Smith myself, in the slaves' quarters. He's not too worse for wear. Don't worry, my lady." The face of the woman, whose name Kestrel had forgotten, filled with such sympathy that she had told her to leave.
Kestrel remembered the woman's expression. She looked at the shredded letter and saw again its written words--so snide, so understanding.
They didn't understand. No one did. They were wrong.
Kestrel slipped back under the blankets.
Some hours later, she called for a slave and asked her to open a window. Cold air poured in, and Kestrel shivered until she heard a distant ringing, the sound of hammer against anvil. Arin must know that she couldn't come to him. Why didn't he come to her?
She could make him. If she sent an order, he would obey.
But she didn't want his obedience. She wanted him to want to see her.
Kestrel flinched at this thought and the pain it brought with it.
She knew that even if everyone believed the wrong thing of her, they were also too close to being ~ Marie Rutkoski

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

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

The lazy flesh disappeared. Our muscles became hard as steel, refined on the anvil of an experienced blacksmith. Even our faces changed. Among other things, we learned to ride, to fence, to take a fall. And these we learned for life. ~ Ernst Junger

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

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

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

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 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

The days became for Christina endless preparation. Ceaseless winds tore through her massing battle ranks, the grey cold sun above marking the timeless date. With skies of blue and cloud overhead, driving, uncompromising time stood still, lingering, as if giving Christina precious eons to perfect her shaving straight razor cuts of mind and sword. She worked alone now, forging the essence of herself in the policies and ways of hammer and anvil, pounding away with the classic, living Japanese blade. Her deft hands spun dervishly, wroughting out the iron of her will, fashioning a blade-mind remade unto her. --Brickley, The Lady and the Samurai ~ Douglas Laurent

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

He tries to force the anger down, but it's like an anvil on his chest. He closes his eyes, like Sammy taught him, and forces the anvil up; he softens. ~ Chris Crutcher

...& 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. ~ Richard Flanagan

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

[T]he heart is a very unreliable coinpass, and even will and knowledge, as all ideological factors in general, are not to be trusted as guides if they are without any material basis…. [I]t is not love nor help which is the guiding rule of our time, but hammer or anvil. In reality it is thus: who does not want to be a servant must try to become a master. Under such conditions it is idle to hope that people will sacrifice realities for ideal precepts. We are not sentimental enough to expect such things. Though we use moral arguments in our struggle against the bourgeois, we do all we can to stimulate our class consciousness. ~ Joseph Dietzgen

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

Point thy tongue on the anvil of truth. ~ Pindar

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

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

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

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

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

Love like an anvil had cracked my locked heart open and unleashed an excruciating flow of tenderness ~ Krista Bremer

A blacksmith is an essential part of your game. It creates needed materials for your world and can also add a touch of decoration to it as well. Every person's blacksmith is different, but there are a few parts of them that are consistent around the table. Every blacksmith has a furnace, an anvil, and a water container. By starting with these materials, you are well on your way to building a great blacksmith. Set alone, it is hard to reach the elements, so I suggest you place them with stone around them. Once you have these in place, you can build a building around it for the sake of looks. ~ Tony Williams

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

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

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

ZENITH
NOON beats out
on its solar anvil
the rays of light ~ Sonia Delaunay

Let me think ... I wonder if an anvil will drop like an apple? ~ Isaac Newton

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

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

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

The pain you are feeling is merely the strike of every hammer blow on the anvil as you are being forged. ~ Adam Copeland

She had seen a huge hunchback ogre with meaty forearms and a pruned face crossing a courtyard with an anvil under one arm. ~ Brandon Mull

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She thought that she had been seeking a light distraction. But when she heard the clang of metal on metal and saw Arin scraping a shaft of steel across the anvil with one set of tools and beating at it with another, Kestrel knew she had come to the wrong place.
"Yes?" he said, keeping his back to her. His workshirt was soaked through with sweat. His hands were sooty. He left the blade of the sword to cool on the anvil and moved to place another, shorter length of metal on the fire, which lined his profile with unsteady light.
She willed her voice to be her own. "I thought we could play a game."
His dark brows drew together.
"Of Bite and Sting," Kestrel said. More firmly, she added, "You implied you know how to play."
He used tongs to stoke the fire. "I did."
"You implied that you could beat me."
"I implied that there was no reason a Valorian would want to play with a Herrani."
"No, you worded things carefully so that what you said could be interpreted that way. But that isn't what you meant."
He faced her then, arms folded across his chest. "I have no time for games." The tips of his fingers had black rings of charcoal dust buried under the nail and into the cuticle. "I have work to do."
"Not if I say you don't."
He turned away. "I like to finish what I start."
She meant to leave. She meant to leave him to the noise and heat. She meant to say nothing more. Instead, Kestrel found herself issuing a challenge. "You are ~ Marie Rutkoski

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

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

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

The anvil is hard so that it can help shape the blade. If life were easy, we would all be soft and misshapen shards of metal, tossed into a bin. ~ J.M. Bush

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

He was weary. Used up. He had been weary for months, for more than a year. In that weariness, in the exhaustion of his spirit, lay the seed of what he was; of what he had become. Of what they had made him, Saladin's men, and all the others as well. Even his own kind. She had cried out for him to beware, when his horse had been hurt, and fallen. And again when he'd stabbed into the boar's throat. He recalled it clearly: "Be careful!" she had cried. "Oh my lord, take care!" But nothing else, past that. Because with the cries of his horse in his head, and the stench of blood in his nostrils, what he killed was no longer a boar. What he was, was no longer a man, but a body, mind, and spirit remade on the anvil of war, remixed in the terrible crucible of a holy insanity. ~ Jennifer Roberson

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

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

& 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

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

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

his abuse
makes her an anvil
without spark ~ Munia Khan

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

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

I was crazy with grief and loneliness, and most of all, with intense, overwhelming guilt that burned through every cell of my being hotter than a Devil's anvil. ~ Nancy S. Thompson

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand like a beaten anvil.
It is the part of a good athlete to be bruised and to prevail. ~ Ignatius Of Antioch

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