Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Pen
1.A pen that can write, I hope?
2.It can write and spell baith, in right hands.
Scott.—Redgauntlet, Chap. XII.
With one good pen I wrote this book,
Made of a grey-goose quill;
A pen it was when it I took,
And a pen I leave it still.
Gill.
[This man wrote a Biblical Commentary, which Sir Walter Scott thinks occupies between five and six hundred printed quarto pages, and has this quatrain at the end of the volume. See note D to the Fortunes of Nigel.]
Oh! Nature’s noblest gift—my grey-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.
Byron.—English Bards, Line 6.
I’ll make thee famous by my pen,
And glorious by my sword.
Montrose.—A Song, My Dear and only Love.
Take away the sword;
States can be saved without it; bring the pen.
Bulwer Lytton.—Richelieu, Act II. Scene 2.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Bulwer Lytton.—Richelieu, Act II. Scene 2.
Those oafs should be restrain’d during their lives
From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives.
Dryden’s Troilus and Cress. Epi. Line 8 from bottom.
No other use of paper thou should’st make
Than carrying loads and reams upon thy back:
Carry vast burdens till thy shoulders shrink,
But curst be he that gives thee pen and ink:
Such dangerous weapons should be kept from fools,
As nurses from their children keep edg’d tools.
Dorset.—To Ed. Howard on his Plays.
Let him be kept from paper, pen, and ink;
So may he cease to write, and learn to think.
Prior.—To a Person who wrote ill.