Quotes about quill

A collection of quotes on the topic of quill, use, ink, likeness.

Quotes about quill

“Feathers shall raise men towards the heaven even as they do the birds. That is by the letters written by their quills.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XLV Prophecies

Men, Bird

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Disease, Reading

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: The Funny Thing Is...

Books, Idea, Time

“Move or die. (Quills)
Never give someone a choice that doesn’t leave them with any way out except to hurt you. (Devyn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Way, Hurt

“To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Catch an Heiress

World

“Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, and hold it the most useful quality of my pen, that it can speedily change from grave to gay, and from description and dialogue to narrative and character. So that, if my quill display no other propertoies of its mothergoose than her mutability, truly I shall be well pleased; and I conceive that you, my worthy friend, will have no occasion for discontent. From the jargon, therefore, of the Highland gillies, I pass to the character of their Chief. It is an important examination, and therefore, like Dogberry, we must spare no wisdom.”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter XIX

Wisdom, Change

“For to pass by those Ancients, the wonderful Pythagoras, the sagacious Democritus, the divine Plato, the most subtle and very learned Aristotle, Men whom every Age has hitherto acknowledged as deservedly honored, as the greatest Philosophers, the Ring-leaders of Arts; in whose Judgments how much these Studies [mathematics] were esteemed, is abundantly proclaimed in History and confirmed by their famous Monuments, which are everywhere interspersed and bespangled with Mathematical Reasonings and Examples, as with so many Stars; and consequently anyone not in some Degree conversant in these Studies will in vain expect to understand, or unlock their hidden Meanings, without the Help of a Mathematical Key: For who can play well on Aristotle’s Instrument but with a Mathematical Quill; or not be altogether deaf to the Lessons of natural Philosophy, while ignorant of Geometry? Who void of (Geometry shall I say, or) Arithmetic can comprehend Plato’s 218 Socrates lisping with Children concerning Square Numbers; or can conceive Plato himself treating not only of the Universe, but the Polity of Commonwealths regulated by the Laws of Geometry, and formed according to a Mathematical Plan?”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), pp. 26-27

Men, Children, Age, Law

“Who e'er ye are, all hail! – whether the skill
Of youthful CANNING guides the ranc'rous quill;
With powers mechanic far above his age,
Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;
Measures the column, mends what e'er's amiss,
Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, ‘Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin’, quoted in Wendy Hinde, George Canning (London: Purnell Books Services, 1973), p. 59.
About

Youth, Age

“To this old song:
Partridge lost his quill,
there's no harm won't befall him.

Partridge, whose winged fancy
aspired to a high estate,
lost a feather in his flight
and won the pen of despondency.
He finds in the breeze no buoyancy
for his pennants to haul him:
there's no harm won't befall him.

He wished to soar to a high tower
but found his plumage clipped,
and, observing himself plucked,
pines away in despair.
If he cries out for succor,
stoke the fire to forestall him:
there's no harm won't befall him.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Perdigão perdeu a pena Não há mal que lhe não venha.Perdigão que o pensamento Subiu a um alto lugar, Perde a pena do voar, Ganha a pena do tormento. Não tem no ar nem no vento Asas com que se sustenha: Não há mal que lhe não venha.Quis voar a üa alta torre, Mas achou-se desasado; E, vendo-se depenado, De puro penado morre. Se a queixumes se socorre, Lança no fogo mais lenha: Não há mal que lhe não venha. "Perdigão que o pensamento", tr. Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 251 Listen to the poem in Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P4_2W-ZwV8&feature=youtu.be&t=10m31s Lyric poetry, Songs (redondilhas)

Despair