rough-hew

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.”

Dr. Farmer, amongst other atrocities which have earned for him an unenviable immortality in connexion with Shakspeare's name, had the incredible folly to recognise, in the splendid image— "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will," an allusion to skewer making! in which the rough-hewing was Shakspeare's, while his more skilful sire shaped the ends!

Shakespeare, though he says “There’s a divinity doth shape our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” admits that “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” which certainly looks as if we had something to do with the matter.

How little he knew then the truth of the poet’s words,— “There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them as we will.”

In my humble opinion—and I daresay many coincide with me—the great poet never spoke truer words than these:— “There’s a Divinity that shapes our lives, Rough-hew them as we will.”