rough-hew

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It also engages the idea that some things may be hard-wired into our blood, echoing Hamlet’s phrase about how there’s a “divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

From New York Times • Apr. 17, 2016

If his plans or attempts should one after the other fail, "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will"!

From Donal Grant, by George MacDonald by MacDonald, George

To shape the ends of wood skewers, i. e., to point them, requires a degree of skill: any one can rough-hew them.

From A Logic Of Facts Or, Every-day Reasoning by Holyoake, George Jacob

But it has been written by a wise man, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” and Tom Blount was soon to find out its truth.

From The Vast Abyss The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam by Fenn, George Manville

He must believe, with Tennyson, in a "far off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves," or with Shakespeare when he said "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

From Church Cooperation in Community Life by Vogt, Paul L. (Paul Leroy)