A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Quote Topics

Anvil Conquer Either Hammer Lose Must Rule Serve Suffer Triumph

Quote Author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German - Novelist
August 28, 1749 - March 22, 1832

You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Voltaire

Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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 proudly to it. Metal's worthless till it is 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

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

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

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

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

The anvil is not afraid of the hammer.

Charles Spurgeon

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

Emily Dickinson

I would rather be the hammer than the anvil

Erwin Rommel

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

George Orwell

The song 'If I Had a Hammer' is geared toward people who don't have a hammer. Maybe before I had a hammer I thought I'd hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening. But once you get a hammer, you find you don't really hammer as much as you thought you would.