"Sledgehammer" Quotes from Famous Books
... disappoints 'em, and they keep on drinkin' because they're disappointed, or kill themselves because their disappointment is too much. For you can depend upon it that any man that gets his mind too much fixed on any idea is like a cross-eyed man killin' a steer with a sledgehammer; he hits whar he's lookin', and hits wrong. Lincoln had a way of holdin' to an idea without the idea draggin' him down ... — Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... but my watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of these I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what had seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only knew that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out at the other, which had bathed the prisoner ... — Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... withdrew but a few bricks were left standing. Every boiler had been blown up with dynamite, and every tank too heavy to be carted away rendered useless. About half an acre was covered with chemical stoneware of all kinds; each piece had been broken with a sledgehammer. Nothing was too small or too large to escape destruction. And to make sure of a good job, everything that would burn was set on fire." Yet within twenty-four hours one met Germans, in-directly or directly responsible for this policy of ... — by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... the race have been men of concentration, who have struck sledgehammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their purpose. The successful men of to-day are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. "Scatteration" is the curse of ... — Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... hammers had stopped. The entire front of the submarine's shed had been removed, and much of the underpinning structure that held the "Pollard" in place. All that remained, to send the steel craft into the water, were the command and a few lusty sledgehammer strokes. ... — The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... close-hauled upon the wind, and lying over, as it then seemed to me, nearly upon her beam ends. The heavy head sea was beating against her bows with the noise and force almost of a sledgehammer, and flying over the deck, drenching us completely through. The topsail halyards had been let go, and the great sails were filling out and backing against the masts with a noise like thunder; the wind ... — Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana |