
“334. When you are an anvill, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1758) : When you're an Anvil, hold you still, When you're a Hammer, strike your Fill.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“334. When you are an anvill, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.”
Maxim 262
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
“I would rather be the hammer than the anvil”
“In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer…”
“I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had written a piece critical of Plato in response to his earlier conversation with Emerson, as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
“Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.”
Source: The Floating Island