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

But "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

From Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine by Waugh, Edwin

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

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)

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