"Nib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black fluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with a weary hand I turned up ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... down at his writing table, took from a drawer a bundle of foolscap paper, fitted a new nib to his pen and filled his ink bottle. ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... the officers carrying a piece of parchment, upon which is written in contracted law Latin, "Preceptum fuit Vicecomiti per breve hujus Scaccarii." To the right of the last-named figure is another officer of the court, who is in the act of examining his pen by placing its nib at a short distance from his eyes; and this person carries in his left hand a piece of parchment upon which are written, in like character, the words "Memorandum quod x die Maii, &c." To the right of this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... he often competed on an equality with the master. One of the lads who worked there made a pen-drawing of some women, clothed, from a design of Ghirlandajo. Michelangelo took up the paper, and with a broader nib corrected the outline of a female figure, so as to bring it into perfect truth to life. Wonderful it was to see the difference of the two styles, and to note the judgment and ability of a mere boy, so spirited and bold, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... much resembling the size of the handle of a fine painting-brush, to the end of which was tied, by a piece of thread, one of those cartilages of which the abbe had before spoken to Dantes; it was pointed, and divided at the nib like an ordinary pen. Dantes examined it with intense admiration, then looked around to see the instrument with which it had been shaped so ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... required, by which means the writer is enabled to use it for 10 or 12 hours with the same ease as with a pencil, without the aid of an Inkstand; and is manufactured in Gold or Silver, either with or without a pencil case, and so constructed that either a Metallic or Quill Nib may be applied. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and bought litigations?—and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen—with what deliberation would he wet ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... he! He's a burnin' shame, and a stinkin' lamp; for the grace o' God wasna hauden to the nib o' 'm lang eneuch to set him in a low (flame), but only lang eneuch to gar the ile o' 'm reek fit to scomfish ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... more liberal than the operation strictly needed was cleared for me on the polished deal table; a penny ink-bottle and a pen with a rusty but still useful nib set upon it, and from a special drawer, with a solemnity that of the character of sacred ritual, Mrs. Watt, as Bill's grandmother informed me she was called, drew forth a single sheet of notepaper. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... occurred to him when he had the watch. Look at this paper. You can imagine him searching his pocket for a piece of waste paper and taking the first that came to his hand. It is written in ink with the pawnbroker's own pen. The inkwell is open," he lifted up the pen, "the nib is still wet," ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... to Harshaw and me, who are looking over her shoulder, "that would be the size of him in my sketch." She points to the marginal pencil-mark, which is not longer than the nib of a stub-pen. "I can't make a little black dot like ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... "I nib my pen and impart to it a fine hair stroke in order that I may give the more delicate touch which can alone show forth the character of this distinguished gentleman. If I hold the pen in hand in idle reverie, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the inscriptions all local gods bear the titles of Nutir ua, only god; Suton nutiru, Suntiru, [ Greek word], king of the gods; of Nutir aa nib pit, the great god, lord of heaven, which show their pretensions to the sovereignty and to the position of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some medium that would rival ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... And she added, pressing the nib of her pen on her finger-nail, "They say he doesn't marry just because he is poor ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... gained by taking notes of this reply, so I amused myself by making a good nib to my pen while I waited for something better ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and ink and a supply of hotel note paper, which Micky looked at with great satisfaction, before he took up a pen, carefully examined the nib, squared his elbows and ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... riddles fraught with meaning, Scandals, anecdotes, reports, - Seeks The Owl a maze of courts Which, with aspect towards the west, Fringe the street of Sainted James, Where a warm, secluded nest As his sole domain he claims; From his wing a feather draws, Shapes for use a dainty nib, Pens his parody or squib; Combs his down and trims his claws, And repairs where windows bright Flood the sleepless Square ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... giving his chair another hitch, dipping his pen afresh into the inkstand, and holding it suspended over the paper, with a threatening drop slowly collecting on the nib. "Now we'll get under weigh just as soon as you give ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... one. The two outside strips are left at their full width from the head downwards to a distance of 2 or 3 inches from the other end, from which point they are cut away, very much as one would cut away the divided nib of a quill pen, so that the actual tips of these two strips are quite slender, being no broader than their thickness. These two ends are tied together with fine vegetable fibre. The centre strip, which is generally narrower ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... relations of things, and indicate the methods and courses of action that result in world-wide good or evil. Seeds carried by the winds and waves plant forests and beautify the waste places of the earth. Truths that flowed from the silent nib of my pen in Vermont, had been garnered in a boy's sympathies to yield me a man's welcome and aid in St. Louis. How clear the lesson, that for seed-sowing, all seasons belong ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... boasting when he had not made a single blot; or confessing to me, in perfect confidence, how much the thinness of Susan's upstrokes, or the thickness of her downstrokes, was owing to the clearness of his slit or the fineness of his nib. ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... "As I said, it's an uncommonly good forgery. You see that the bodies of the letters are all written with the same pen, a gold-nibbed fountain-pen; the signatures are written with a steel nib. It cuts deeper into the paper, and the ink doesn't flow off it so evenly. The forged signature is written with the same kind of nib as the genuine ones. Also, the bodies of the letters are written ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... is not his Lordship son-in-law to old Goldsmid, whilom editor of the Anti-Galliean, and for many years an honoured and withal notorious resident of Paris! Of course BEN D'ISRAELI, his Lordship's friend, will get a slice of secretaryship—may be allowed to nib a state quill, if he must not use ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... wide arc of the egg-shaped tube was a concave platinum cathode, at the narrow arc a nib of some sort, ending in a socket. From this socket, two heavy insulated wires extended sixty feet or so across the sand to the secondary unit of the mechanism, which was roughly a series of resistance coils, resembling those ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... for a rarity at the seat of business: it is but little time I can generally command from secular calligraphy—the pen seems to know as much and makes letters like figures—an obstinate clerkish thing. It shall make a couplet in spite of its nib before I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... comfort again in the piano and this time starts to play, with one finger and some hesitation, the first bars of a Bach fugue, HORSHAM'S pen-nib is disappointing him and the letter is not easy ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... said the lawyer, taking some paper from his desk, and carefully examining the nib of a quill pen, "Let me see, I think you ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... writing was an impossibility under the circumstances, but she was determined that he should not recognise her embarrassment. Her nib flew relentlessly over the sheets, but the letter was disconnected and dry. At last she gathered her writing materials together, and ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... doesn't do me any harm. My announcement at breakfast that this was one of the mornings was greeted with a surprised enthusiasm which was most flattering. Archie offered me his own room where he does his thinking; Simpson offered me a nib; and Dahlia promised me a quiet time till lunch. I thanked them all and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... look at this ridiculous little nib now, running like a plow along the furrows! What can the poor thing do? Bury its poor black, blunt little nose in the English language in order to tell you, in all sorts of roundabout ways, what you know ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... drew from his old pair of Spanish blues (open at the knees, with a silver buckle appended), what we denominate a Flemish or gardener's knife, and proceeded, with the help of a pair of cracked spectacles, to nib ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... order, a papier-mache blotter embellished with a view of York Minster by moonlight, a brass ink-stand, which would have been insulted by the touch of ink, and a penholder with a cornelian handle which had never known a nib. Not the most daring of visitors had ever been known to desecrate that shrine. When the mistress of the house wished to write a letter, she spread a newspaper over the dining- room table, and a sheet of blotting-paper over that, and carefully unlocked the desk which had been a present from Cousin ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... get Coutts to further on to Paris—to Mrs. Kemble in Paris. And I have written it all in my best MS. with a pen that has been held with its nib in water for more than a fortnight—Charles Keene's recipe for keeping Pens ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... in the first volume, has the merit of regularity, and appears the same throughout the succeeding six, except in the rare places (e.g. vi. 92-93), where the lazy copyist did not care to change a worn-out pen, and continued to write with a double nib. On the other hand, it is the character of a village-schoolmaster whose literary culture is at its lowest. Hardly a sheet appears without some blunder which only in rare places is erased or corrected, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... NEB, or NIB. The bill of a bird, and the slit of a pen. Figuratively, the face and mouth of a woman; as, She holds up her neb: she holds up her mouth ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... northern Beattie, which are not connected with the great name Elizabeth. This is in medieval rolls represented by its cognate Isabel, of which the shortened form was Bell (Chapter I), or Ib, the latter giving Ibbot, Ibbotson, and the rimed forms Tib-, Nib-, Bib-, Lib-. Here also belong Ebbs and Epps rather than to ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley |
