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

The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of *labor, and the gauds of precedence.

I would rather be the hammer than the anvil

Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.

Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; But Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour.

The hammer shatters glass but forges steel.

6075. When you are Anvil, hold you still ;
When you are Hammer, strike your Fill.

You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

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.

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.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

334. When you are an anvill, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.

If you start wielding a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And maybe they’re not. Maybe it's more subtle than that. And so your toolkit has to be able to morph into what is necessary for what it is that you confront at that moment.

I have to forge my weapons according to the strength of the resistance.