Pens

"Whose noble praise Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing."

"Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword."

"Take away the sword; States can be saved without it; bring the pen!"

"Hinc quam sit calamus sævior euse, patet."

"Oh! nature's noblest gift—my gray-goose quill! Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent-bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men!"

"The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing Made of a quill from an angel's wing."

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

"While the language of the lips is fleeting as the breath itself, and confined to a single spot as well as to a single moment, the language of the pen enjoys, in many instances, an adamantine existence, and will only perish amid the ruins of the globe. Before its mighty touch time and space become annihilated; it joins epoch to epoch, and pole to pole.[…] But for this, everything would be doubt, and darkness, and death-shade; all knowledge would be traditionary and all experience local; civilized life would relapse into barbarism, and man would have to run through his little, and comparatively insignificant round of existence, the perpetual sport of ignorance and error, uninstructed by science, unregulated by laws, and unconsoled by Revelation."

"When a filled pen is held point downwards, the ink it contains is acted on by a variety of forces, among which may be reckoned gravity, inertia, capillary attraction, air pressure, friction, and the viscosity of the liquid, as well as several minor forces. If the pen is properly made, these forces are in a state of equilibrium, and the ink does not run out of the reservoir. As soon, however, as the point touches a surface it is capable of wetting, the action of the capillary attraction is altered, with the result that the ink is enabled to flow from the reservoir, and that the pen writes."

"The swifter hand doth the swift words outrun: Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done."

"Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre."

"Tant la plume a eu sous le roi d'avantage sur l'épée."

"Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter."

"To hold a pen is to be at war"

"Art thou a pen, whose task shall be To drown in ink What writers think? Oh, wisely write, That pages white Be not the worse for ink and thee."

"For what made that in glory shine so long But poets' Pens, pluckt from Archangels' wings?"

"Anser, apie, vitellus, populus et regna gubernant."

"The pen became a clarion."

"The sacred Dove a quill did lend From her high-soaring wing."

"Non sest aliena res, quæ fere ab honestis negligi solet, cura bene ac velociter scribendi."

"You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading."

"The feather, whence the pen Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, Dropped from an Angel's wing."