pen quotes

Men have everyadvantage of us in telling their story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

-Jane Austen
  Persuasion, ch.23.

To give anaccurateand exhaustive account of the period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

- Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
  TheYellow Book, vol.4.

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong For such despite they cast on female wits; If what I do prove well, it won't advance, They'll say it's stolen, or else, it was by chance.

- Anne ne  e Dudley Bradstreet
  Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of  Wit and Learning,'The Prologue'.

I describe imperfect characters. Every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line.

- Charlotte Bronte« 
  Shirley, ch.5.

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

-Lytton
  Richelieu, act 2, sc.2.

Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet. From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword.

- Robert pseudonym DemocritusJunior Burton
Anatomy of Melancholy, pt.1, section 2, member 4, subsection 4.

Write with your spade, and garden with your pen, Shove your couplets to their long repose. And type your turnips down the field in rows.

- (Ignatius) Roy Dunnachie Campbell
  'The Georgiad', pt.2.

   Sir, My pa requests me to write to you. The doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever recuvver the use of his legs which prevents his holding a pen.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
^9  Fanny Squeers. Nicholas Nickleby, ch.15.

   Upon Saint Crispin's day Fought was this noble fray, Which fame did not delay To England to carry; Oh, when shall English men With such acts fill a pen, Or England breed again Such a King Harry?

- Michael Drayton
  Of the Battle of  Agincourt. Poems Lyrick and Pastorall,'To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, His Ballad of  Agincourt'.

   This pen's all I have of magic wand.

-Tony Harrison
  V.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are,'It might have been,' More sad are these we daily see: 'It is, but hadn't ought to be.'

- (Francis) Bret Harte
  'Mrs.  Judge  Jenkins'.

   Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.

- SeamusJustin Heaney
  Death of a Naturalist,'Digging'.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain.

-John Keats
  'When I Have FearsThat I May Cease to Be'.

Ireland never was contented† Say you so? You are demented. Ireland was contented when All could use the sword and pen, And whenTara rose so high That her turrets split the sky, And about her courts were seen Liveried Angels robed in green, Wearing, by St. Patrick's bounty, Emeralds big as half a county.

-Walter Savage Landor
  'Ireland never was contented'.

Are simple women only fit To dress, to darn, to flower or knit, To mind the distaff, or the spit? Why are the needle and the pen Thought incompatible by men? 507

- Esther married name  Clark Lewis
  'A Mirror for Detractors', l.146^50.

Every author's fairy godmother should provide him not only with a pen but also with a blue pencil.

- F(rank) L(awrence) Lucas
  Style, introduction.

   But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows† Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, 'Fool,'said my muse to me; 'look in thy heart, and write.'

- Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
Astrophel and Stella, sonnet1.

I would have been disappointed if I hung up my pen without ever getting one†[and] now I hope to get one every 30 years like clockwork.

-1st Viscount
  On receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Lost inYonkers. In the Washington Post,10 Apr.

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.

- Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
  Letter to George Montague, 30 Jul. In The Correspondence of HoraceWalpole (Yale edition,1937^8).

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

-John Greenleaf Whittier
  'Maud Muller', l.105^6.

  Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness.We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

-William Wordsworth
  'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour', complete poem (published1807).