Fountain Pen Quotations

[evan-houseman]

How about a post in the spirit of Bartlett’s Quotations, focusing on Fountain Pens.

A collection of all the truisms, maxims, pithy little sayings you’ve come up with, or heard once and remembered.

Here’s a few of my own.

 

- A fountain pen always knows when your wearing your favorite shirt.

 

- There’s an unholy attraction between nibs and feeds and an open drain.

 

- Don’t blame the pen for the ink.

 

- To push down on a fountain pen; to force it to write, is to still not understand fountain pens.

 

- Sometimes an ugly pen writes better than a beautiful one.

 

- The nib and feed are 90% of a good pen, and 100% of a bad one.

 

- Perfect pen and ink combinations, unexplained, but it happens.

 

- The best fountain pen somehow makes your handwriting look better.

 

 

 

[PAKMAN]

Dropped pens always land on the nib!

[johnsi02]

- The thing that justifies a cranky, inefficient artifact like a fountain pen is how it can express the writers personality.

 

- sidthecat

 

Edited to attribute the source. Thanks for a nice quote, sidthecat, I've paraphrased it often since first seeing it to explain in brief why I use fountain pens.

Edited July 10, 2020 by johnsi02

[carlos.q]

Life is too short for crappy pens.

[peroride]

I'm gonna make one up as influenced by FPN particularly @Bo Bo Olsen

 

- There's a new pen or sucker born every month

[vicpen123]

A pen is a pen is a pen is a pen (repeating) is not true.

 

Life is too short not to enjoy a good pen (or cigar, car, meal, drink, holiday .....).

 

Fill yer hand with .....ink.

 

A nib is where the thought meets the paper.

 

The fountain pen is mightier than the ballpoint.

[PAKMAN]

Life is too short to write with an ugly pen or black ink!

[evan-houseman]

came across a new one this morning:

"The pen is the tongue of the mind." Horace - roman poet (65 - 8 BC)

[Antenociticus]

"IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable."

Walter Benjamin, "The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses", from One-Way Street (1925–26)

[Maurizio]

Here are two from famous writers:

 

 

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Graham Greene

 

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try.

Mark Twain

[Beechwood]

HM The Queen to Prince Philip at a press conference and needing to sign a document.

 

'Have you brought your pen'

 

'Err no'

 

'I told you to'

 

Seeing the problem, Arthur Edwards, photographer at the Sun, hands her a Bic.

 

Her response.

 

'Hmm, a ballpoint'.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Beechwood

[Beechwood]

Headline in the newspaper

 

BROAD MEDIUM FINE

 

 

Underneath it said female spiritualist recovers

[markh]

.... Some pen, somewhere, knows you have too much money and need to spend it.....

 

 

.

[Freddy]

"Never met a pen I didn't like",

 

Fred

[Runnin_Ute]

See the Mark Twain quote in my signature.

 

"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try."

 

Mark Twain

Edited July 18, 2020 by Runnin_Ute

[praxim]

The pens you use least become the most expensive you own.

 

edit: this was evidently ambiguous so I changed a word. I intend that price does not matter, usage does.

Edited July 19, 2020 by praxim

[Runnin_Ute]

The pens you use least are the most expensive you own.

 

Interesting. In my case, my three most expensive ($150+) are among my most used.

[PAKMAN]

True for me, don't think my 3-4 most expensive pens have been in rotation for quite a while!

[praxim]

Interesting. In my case, my three most expensive ($150+) are among my most used.

Then they are cheap. That was my meaning. It is usage which determines effective price, not original price be it high or low.

[svn]

Borrowed from the Russian pen forum (post #7, belongs to Nightingale323F)

http://www.elitepen.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19423&start=0

in my (quite probably, not so perfect) translation:

 

Not all international converters are born equal, some are more international while others are less so.