These anvil quotes will inspire you. An anvil is a metalworking tool consisting of a large block of metal (usually forged or cast steel), with a flattened top surface, upon which another object is struck (or “worked”).
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging anvil quotes, anvil sayings, and anvil proverbs.
Famous Anvil 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
- “In real life, it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.” ~ George Orwell
- “The anvil is not afraid of the hammer.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
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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
- “You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.” ~ Robert Jordan
- “It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.” ~ Emily Dickinson
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“Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.” ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
- “A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.” ~ Charles R. Swindoll
- “We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
- “In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Hammer and anvil quotes
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“Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.” ~ Elizabeth Haydon
- “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 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
- “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 -
“The Word of God is the anvil upon which the opinions of men are smashed.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
- “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
- “One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.” ~ Emile Zola
- “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
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“The anvil of justice is planted firm, and fate who makes the sword does the forging in advance.” ~ Aeschylus
- “Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.” ~ Claude Adrien Helvetius
- “I would rather be the hammer than the anvil” ~ Erwin Rommel
- “Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.” ~ Carl Sandburg -
“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
- “It is a fantastic initiative by the ministry to develop Aakash Tablet, a mobile device that can be utilized by students anywhere. It was successfully tried out. The second and third versions have come out and the fourth version is on the anvil.” ~ M. M. Pallam Raju
- “I keep waiting, like in the cartoons, for an anvil to drop on my head.” ~ Angie Harmon
- “In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten.” ~ Voltaire
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“The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer’s character.” ~ J. G. Holland
- “Stand firm and immovable as an anvil when it is beaten upon.” ~ Ignatius of Loyola
- “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 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
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“Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth and what flies up, though it be but a spark, will have light.” ~ Pindar
- “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 - “As men have often forsaken the plow 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
- “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
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“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
- “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
- “ZENITH / NOON beats out / on its solar anvil / the rays of light” ~ Sonia Delaunay
- “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
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“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
- “I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people’s virtues.” ~ Freya Stark
- “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 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
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“Home is the bottom line of life, the anvil upon which attitudes and convictions are hammered out the single most influential force in our earthly existence. No price tag can adequately reflect its value.” ~ Charles R. Swindoll]
- “A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.” ~ John Webster
- “You can’t run away from your identity. Even if I went to another band, I’d still be Lips from the band Anvil. I’ve spent my entire life trying to be that, that’s what I am. There’s nowhere to run.” ~ Steve
- “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
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“This is what entertainment is all about- idiots, explosives and falling anvils.” ~ John Calvin
- “When a man is in God’s grace and free from mortal sin, then everything that he does, so long as there is no sin in it, gives God glory and what does not give him glory has some, however little, sin in it. It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting 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.” ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins
- “Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the “Faery Queen.”” ~ James Russell Lowell
- “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 Spurgeon
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“Our bodies are but the anvils of pain and disease and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares.” ~ Walter Raleigh
- “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 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 - “Golf puts a man’s character on the anvil and his richest qualities – patience, poise, restraint – to the flame.” ~ Billy Casper
- “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
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“Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers. There are men who can’t be bought.” ~ Carl Sandburg
- “Every theory in medicine, if medicine is to remain healthy, must be beaten out on the anvil of skepticism. So do we weed out charlatanism?” ~ Alice Tisdale Hobart
- “Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “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
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“And take back ill-polished stanzas to the anvil.” ~ Horace
- “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
- “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
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“We’re going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We’re going to beat guns into submission!” ~ Charles Schumer
- “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
- “You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
