Pen Quotes - page 8

... Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business: heaps of material are strewn every where; but they lie in disorder, unread, uncatalogued, unknown. It seems a dreary waste of life to be analysing, indexing, extracting works and passages, in which one per cent of the contents are interesting, and not half of that per centage will ultimately appear in the flowing narrative. (Walter Bagehot)
Surrey, the Granville of a former age: Matchless his pen, victorious was his lance; Bold in the lists, and graceful in the dance. View quote
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. View quote
Jackson Pollock
The doctrine of Right and Wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by Pen and the Sword: Whereas the doctrine of Lines, and Figures, is not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no mans ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, That the three Angles of a Triangle, should be equall to two Angles of a Square; that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of Geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able. View quote
Thomas Hobbes
Then proudly smiled that old man To see the eager lad Rush madly for his pen and ink And for his blotting-pad – But, when he thought of publishing, His face grew stern and sad. View quote
Lewis Carroll
The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor. View quote
Stephen King
How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn't pull the trigger? View quote
Virginia Woolf
One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Like a beast in a pen, I'm cut off From my friends, freedom, the Sun. But the hunters are gaining ground; I've nowhere else to run. View quote
Boris Pasternak
[Human]] history is the story of that 'Good Fight', of the effort of man to attain that universal liberty to which, he feels himself born. All wars are but battles in this war. It is fought by the tongue and pen as earnestly as with the sword and shell. It is called by various names. The combatants rally under various banners. Whatever in human nature is hopeful, generous, aspiring, the love of God and trust in man, is arrayed on one side. The meaner passions, the baser purpose, stand upon the other. View quote
George William Curtis
Isaacs has a cheap Bic pen in his hand. He runs his fingers down the shaft, inverts it, runs his fingers down the shaft, over and over, in a motion that is mechanical rather than impatient. (J. M. Coetzee)
Sometimes when he is among the sheep - when they have been rounded up to be dipped, and are penned tight and cannot get away - he wants to whisper to them, warn them of what lies in store. But then in their yellow eyes he catches a glimpse of something that silences him: a resignation, a foreknowledge not only of what happens to sheep at the hands of Ros behind the shed, but of what awaits them at the end of their long, thirsty ride to Cape Town on the transport lorry. They know it all, down to the finest detail, and yet they submit. They have calculated the price and are prepared to pay it - the price of being on earth, the price of being alive. View quote
J. M. Coetzee
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
When we put the pen to paper, we articulate things in our life that we may have felt vague about. Before you write about something, somebody says, 'How do you feel?' and you say, 'Oh, I feel okay.' Then you write about it, and you discover you don't feel okay. View quote
Julia Cameron
Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink, Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides. Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now? You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes? View quote
Brandon Boyd
Give us that grand word "woman" once again, and let's have done with "lady"; one's a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one's a word for lackeys. View quote
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Robert E. Lee paused to dip his pen once more in the inkwell. Despite flannel shirt, uniform coat, and heavy winter boots, he shivered a little. The headquarters tent was cold. The winter had been harsh, and showed no signs of growing any milder. New England weather, he thought, and wondered why God had chosen to visit it upon his Virginia. View quote
Harry Turtledove
So Henry Adams, well aware that he could not succeed as a scholar, and finding his social position beyond improvement or need of effort, betook himself to the single ambition which otherwise would scarcely have seemed a true outcome of the college, though it was the last remnant of the old Unitarian supremacy. He took to the pen. He wrote. View quote
Henry Adams
The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp. View quote
Terry Pratchett
I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro. View quote
Terry Pratchett
A match as a pen Blood on the floor as ink The forgotten gauze cover as paper But what should I write? I might just manage my address. This ink is strange; it clots. I write you from a prison in Greece. (Alexandros Panagoulis)
I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second. View quote
Colm Tóibín
This guy should have been taken out of the croc pen, had his kids taken from him, and been thrown in the deepest, darkest, dankest pit the Australian judicial system has to offer. Preferably after being skinned alive. Asshole is too good a word. (2006) View quote
John Byrne
I live and occasionally I look up at the glorious air or the clouds into which I keep digging my grave with my pen, diligently, like a forced laborer, whom they order every day to dig deeper with his spade... View quote
Imre Kertész
Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war - centuries of hypocrisy - centuries of injustice. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll