Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. [ Whittier ]
Memory records services with a pencil, injuries with a graver. [ De Segur ]
Ah! would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way, from the eye, through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost! [ Lessing ]
Not a flower but shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, of His unrivaled pencil. He inspires their balmy odors, and imparts their hues. [ Cowper ]
We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess. [ Zimmermann ]
The emperor one day took up a pencil which fell from the hand of Titian, who was then drawing his picture; and upon the compliment which Titian made him on that occasion he said, Titian deserves to be served by Caesar.
[ Dryden ]
Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust. [ Colton ]
Winckelmann wished to live with a work of art as a friend. The saying is true of pen and pencil. Fresh lustre shoots from Lycidas in a twentieth perusal. The portraits of Clarendon are mellowed by every year of reflection. [ Willmott ]
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies' wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn-door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Imaginary evils soon become real ones, by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall, or the wainscot, can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied. [ Swift ]
The flitting sunbeam has been grasped and made to do man's bidding in place of the painter's pencil. And although Franklin tamed the lightning, yet not until yesterday has its instantaneous flash been made the vehicle of language: thus in the transmission of thought annihilating space and time. [ Professor Robinson ]
An observant man, in all his intercourse with society and the world, carries a pencil constantly in his hand, and, unperceived, marks on every person and thing the figure expressive of its value, and therefore instantly on meeting that person or thing again, knows what kind and degree of attention to give it. This is to make something of experience. [ John Foster ]
I have very often lamented and hinted my sorrow, in several speculations, that the art of painting is made so little use of to the improvement of manners. When we consider that it places the action of the person represented in the most agreeable aspect imaginable, - that it does not only express the passion or concern as it sits upon him who is drawn, but has under those features the height of the painter's imagination, - what strong images of virtue and humanity might we not expect would be instilled into the mind from the labors of the pencil! [ Steele ]