Quills Quotes

• Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

  Herman Melville

  Art, Writing, Giving

  Herman Melville (1892). “Moby Dick”, p.428

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some battles are won with swords and spears, others with quills and ravens.

  George R. R. Martin

  Ravens, Battle, Spears

  George R. R. Martin (2003). “A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Three”, p.78, Bantam

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Feathers shall raise men even as they do birds towards heaven :- That is by letters written with their quills.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Life, Airplane

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1906). “Note Books: Arranged and Rendered Into English, with Introd”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• But the way to wealth through the quill seems long.

  Elizabeth Charles

  Long, Way, Wealth

  Elizabeth Rundle Charles (1865). “Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family”, p.53

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't be a proper writer without a touch of madness, can you?

  Kate Winslet

  Madness

  "Fictional character: Madeleine". "Quills", www.imdb.com. 2000.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

  Marquis de Sade

  Running, Conversation, Certain

  101 Copy quote

• Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Writing, Eye, Fire

  171 Copy quote

• Quill: An instrument of torture yielded by a goose and commonly weilded by as ass.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Art, Entertainment, Ass

  6 Copy quote

• He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.

  John Milton

  Various, Lays

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 186

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Julia Quinn

  Writing, World, Ink

  8 Copy quote

• I write what I see, the endless procession to the guillotine. Were all lined up, waiting for the crunch of the blade... the rivers of blood are flowing beneath our feet... Ive been to hell, young man, youve only read about it.

  Marquis de Sade

  Writing, Men, Blood

  22 Copy quote

• GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Writing, Bird, Feelings

  Ambrose Bierce, Brian St. Pierre (1987). “The Devil's advocate: an Ambrose Bierce reader”, Chronicle Books (CA)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

  Clifton Webb

  Writing, Use, Venom

  "Fictional character: Waldo Lydecker". "Laura", 1944.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• God strung up his own son like a side of veal. I shudder to think what he would do to me.

  Marquis de Sade

  Religious, Son, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Be circumspect how you offend schollers, for knowe, a serpent tooth bites not so ill, as dooth a schollers angrie quill.

  John Florio

  Power, Teeth, Management

  7 Copy quote

• I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Fear, Eye

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 5, l. 13

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How d’you spell ‘belligerent’?” said Ron, shaking his quill very hard while staring at his parchment. “It can’t be B — U — M —” “No, it isn’t,” said Hermione. “And ‘augury’ doesn’t begin O — R — G either.

  J. K. Rowling

  Hermione, Said, Staring

  7 Copy quote

• While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me - drawing on my skin - not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Butterfly, Wings

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.69, Anchor

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're not very dangerous animals; we don't have a horn like a rhino or quills like a porcupine.

  Helen Fisher

  Animal, Rhinos, Porcupines

  22 Copy quote

• A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.

  Josh Billings

  Witty, Porcupines, Distinction

  10 Copy quote

• With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy.

  Pietro Aretino

  Kings, Heart, Son

  5 Copy quote

• The thought hath good leggs, and the quill a good tongue.

  George Herbert

  Tongue

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.346

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Xenophon wrote with a swan's quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and Thucydides with a brazen stylus.

  Joseph Joubert

  Plato, Swans, Style

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Forgiveness, Men, Forgiving

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.72

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Forgiveness, World, Hedgehogs

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Lectures to young men, on various important subjects”, p.314

  12 Copy quote

  Show source