What is a workman without his tooles? – Proverb quoted by Heywood, 1546

Blunt tools are sometimes found of use where sharper instruments would fail. – Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge [plain-speaking, candor —tεᖇ&#55

The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659

Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden