Pens

Pens are devices used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used, with a nib of some sort to be dipped in the ink. Ruling pens allow precise adjustment of line width, and still find a few specialized uses, but technical pens such as the Rapidograph are more commonly used. Modern types also include ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt or ceramic tip pens.

Quotes

• Whose noble praise
  Deserves a quill pluckt from an angel's wing.
  • Dorothy Berry, Sonnet, prefixed to Diana Primrose's Chain of Pearls (1699).

• Beneath the rule of men entirely great
  The pen is mightier than the sword.
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839), Act II, scene 2.

• Hinc quam sit calamus sævior euse, patet.
  • From this it appears how much more cruel the pen may be than the sword.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section XXI. Mem. 4. Subsec. 4.

• 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!
  • Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), line 7.

• The pen wherewith thou dost so heavenly sing
  Made of a quill from an angel's wing.
  • Henry Constable, Sonnet, found in Notes to Todd's Milton, Volume V, p. 454 (Ed. 1826).

• The pen is mightier than the sword.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Oration, (1783).

• The swifter hand doth the swift words outrun:
  Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done.
  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XIV, Epigram 208. Translation by Wright (on a shorthand writer).

• Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  • If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
  • Attributed to Richelieu by Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'Histoire (1883), Chapter XLI, p. 255.

• Tant la plume a eu sous le roi d'avantage sur l'épée.
  • So far had the pen, under the king, the superiority over the sword.
  • Saint Simon, Mémoires, Volume III (1702; Ed. 1856), p. 517.

• Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
  • William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601-02), Act III, scene 2, line 52.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 592-93.

• 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.
  • Ethel Lynn Beers, The Gold Nugget.

• For what made that in glory shine so long
  But poets' Pens, pluckt from Archangels' wings?
  • John Davies, Bien Venu.

• Anser, apie, vitellus, populus et regna gubernant.
  • Goose [pen] bee [wax] and calf [parchment] govern the world.
  • Quoted by James Howell. Letters, Book II. Letter 2.

• The pen became a clarion.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Monte Cassino, Stanza 13.

• The sacred Dove a quill did lend
  From her high-soaring wing.
  • F. Nethersole. Prefixed to Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victorie.

• Non sest aliena res, quæ fere ab honestis negligi solet, cura bene ac velociter scribendi.
  • Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practise of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
  • Quintilian, De Institutione Oratorio, I. 5.

• You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading.
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Clio's Protest. See Moore's Life of Sheridan, Volume I, p. 55.

• The feather, whence the pen
  Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men,
  Dropped from an Angel's wing.
  • William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Part III. V. Walton's Book of Lives.