I collected these quotes from handouts given by various calligraphy teachers, from books, magazines, and other sources over the years. Each quote offers food for thought and helps expand our understanding of our art.
What an extraordinary way the reed pen has of drinking darkness and pouring out light!
Abu Hafs Ibn Burd Al-Asghar, Andalusi poet
The art of beautiful writing is accessible to anyone who wants to unlock its secrets.
Julien Chazal
“Modern calligraphy” is the folk art class of script forms that is easy for someone to learn, compared with the more formal hands of calligraphy that take much time and effort to master. Modern calligraphy is a class of trendy scripts that are characterized by bounced and rounded lettering, which is closer to freestyle handwriting than historical calligraphy and its variations.
Steve Husting
To be concerned with the shape of letters is to work in an ancient and fundamental material.
William Addison Dwiggins
The qualities of letterforms at their best are the qualities of a classic time.
William Addison Dwiggins
Order, Simplicity, Grace. To try to learn and repeat their excellence is to put oneself under training in a most simple and severe school of design.
William Addison Dwiggins
The development of letters was a purely natural process in the course of which distinct and characteristic types were evolved and some knowledge of how these came into being will help us in understanding their anatomy and distinguishing good and bad forms.
Edward Johnston
Always introduce a bit of imperfection, because calligraphy is made by the human hand, not a machine, and human imperfections will always be more appealing to humans than perfection.
Ina Saltz
Do calligraphy which is more like your handwriting. Connect your letters in ways which no machine can do. This is the future of calligraphy.
Ina Saltz
There must be endless repetitions of every stroke in order to win exact beauty of execution. But the winning is sure. Failure means nothing — except the need for further practice. Perseverance in it assures nothing less than perfection at the last. “Practise” is the word of power.
Edward Summers Squier, M.A. (1919 book)
It should be the ambition of every penman to make his writing first clear, then graceful, and finally distinctive. It is in this last development that personality appears.
Edward Summers Squier, M.A. (1919 book)
Faithful practice will bring its own great reward — the possession of an accomplishment that should be earnestly desired by all, a handwriting at once clear and rapid, distinctive and beautiful.
Edward Summers Squier, M.A. (1919 book)
Ultimately, what gets written is not words, but feeling, or what is written into the words is feeling. The hand writes the heart.
Steven Skaggs
Bad calligraphy is making forms that are unsure, insecure, self-conscious, whereas good calligraphy unites the freedom of the hand with the mastery of tool and self in performance, whether letterforms be present or absent.
Steven Skaggs
It is only in revealing the moving hand that calligraphy becomes calligraphy. The accidental nicks in form caused by the paper fibers, the running and splashing of ink, the carefree and graceful swashing and buckling — these are the calligraphy. The calligraphy is found in those aspects of form that reveal the hand’s freedom, the gesture, the dance, the tool’s scraping and flowing, the intersection of mind and nature that occurs when hand and heart move as one. In short, the instantaneous character of the living mark is the calligraphy.
Steven Skaggs
Calligraphy has always existed in that place of tension between what the letterform desires: to be completely principled, and what the hand desires: infinite freedom of gesture.
Steven Skaggs
Calligraphy: Disciplined freedom is the essence of it.
Raymond DaBoll
Marks come alive when they are made with a sense of confidence, engagement, an unselfconscious tap into the flow that is somehow beyond yet also within the calligrapher. When that happens — and all of you know it when it happens — the calligrapher becomes an instrument; the egoistic wall between self and other dissolves; page, mind and world unite.
Steven Skaggs
Calligraphy is a beautiful art in continuous transformation, and therefore new eyes are always needed to interpret it with respect.
Ernesto Murrau
If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind’s eye and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.
Twyla Tharp
All the other inspiration I need to design a calligraphy piece is found right in the text if I take the time to meditate on its meaning.
Timothy R. Botts
With each color and letter style, I enter into the meaning of the text. Words of gratitude are made with flourishes. Words of confession are lower case and sometimes made with my untrained hand to convey humility. Relationships are written with interwoven letters touching each other.
Timothy R. Botts
The process of visualizing the words causes the meaning to go straight to my heart.
Timothy R. Botts
Regardless of how diligently a person practices penning the strokes and letters, their efforts will never lead to consistently superb results unless they can see the correct forms in their mind before their pen touches the paper. “The hand cannot conceive what the mind cannot perceive.”
Michael R. Sull
Artistic Writing is so attractive and pleasing to the eye that it is never likely to lose its popularity. The skill displayed in its execution creates wonder and holds most people by its fascination.
F.W. Tamblyn
The calligraphy is found in those aspects of form that reveal the hand’s freedom, the gesture, the dance, the tool’s scraping and flowing, the intersection of mind and nature that occurs when hand and heart move as one. In short, the instantaneous character of the living mark is the calligraphy.
Steven Skaggs
Bad calligraphy comes from not understanding tool and form well enough to be free and clear in gesture. Bad calligraphy is making forms that are unsure, insecure, self-conscious, whereas good calligraphy unites the freedom of the hand with the mastery of tool and self in performance, whether letterforms be present or absent.
Steven Skaggs
Marks come alive when they are made with a sense of confidence, engagement, an unselfconscious tap into the flow that is somehow beyond yet also within the calligrapher.
Steven Skaggs
The advantage of drawing letters is that we can incorporate nuance. Nuance, rather than slavish precision, is what breathes life into our letters.
Peter Thornton
The man who works with his hands is a laborer. The man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman. The man who works with his hands, his brain, and his heart is an artist.
Louis Nizer
The written letter is something personal, organic, unique and spontaneous. It mirrors the character and the personality of the writer, and often his mood of the moment.
Emil Ruder
The scribe should choose the best and simplest forms and arrangements and master them before going further. He should have a few definite types at his fingertips, and for everyday use, a matter of a course way of putting them down on paper.
Edward Johnston
The letter beautiful is an ideal we are engaged in, and it is oftentimes our subject. As we will never be free of this, we must embrace it.
John Stevens
We warm up to feel a connection to our tools. So much of our work is about feeling. My own rituals include writing something else beforehand in order to loosen up. I want to have the right balance between feeling controlled and free. If I feel tight, I write something real loose and spontaneous. If I am feeling loose, I must focus on precision . . . all in service of getting into “the zone.”
John Stevens
Play and experimentation are the lifeblood of work. Many creative solutions have a discernible play element. This allows work to stay fresh, rather than looking rehearsed or uninspired.
John Stevens
Experiment is work without expectations. There is no predetermined outcome. We flirt with surprise or disaster. And if we are clever, we spot when we have done something new and interesting, and harvest it and own it.
John Stevens
Many words have been used to describe the qualities one aims for in pen calligraphy. Johnston’s form breaks it down nicely: unity, sharpness, and freedom. It means one’s goal is to be precise and yet achieve effortlessness at the same time (this is a basic tenet of calligraphy throughout the world).
John Stevens
The scribe strives for spontaneity, sometimes he sweats blood to make it look easy, for spontaneity is the life blood of calligraphy.
Ray Da Boll
In the end, what matters most can be distilled to a set of three values: beauty, expression, and excellence. One can get a lot of mileage out of pursuing those three values. Let’s stay open and not let so-called “expressive calligraphy” be our only option.
John Stevens
Rather than rely on a cache of styles, learn at least a little about letterform modification.
John Stevens
To summarize: you diverge (expand your vision through experimentation) and converge (learn to use the possibilities, choosing new forms that work and apply them).
John Stevens
You will never see good letters coming from your hand until you have learned to see good letters in your head. Good work depends on clear mental images. Clear images are based on knowledge of the causes of the thing imagined. Knowledge comes from intelligent practice. When practice has given the artist a clear image of what he has to do, he has insight into his art.
Lawrence R. Brady
Letters act as practical and useful signs, but also as pure and inner melody.
Wassily Kandinsky
Calligraphy is the ultimate synthesis of what I love: language, art and human connection.
Joy Deneen
My challenge is to paint the music of poetry, the motion of poetry, the part that cannot be understood.
Thomas Ingmire
I believe that working only from the conscious limits one’s creativity — whereas transcending consciousness can enhance the inner life of a work of art.
Denis Brown
I look at lettering as a huge palette which includes calligraphy, type forms, and everything in between. The colours of that palette can be mixed into an infinite variety of blends.
Julian Waters
The furthering of calligraphy in our own time above all serves self-realization by developing man’s creative talents. Calligraphy frees emotions and abilities which are hidden in the depths of personality. It activates the power of the soul.
Karlgeorg Hoefer
Calligraphy is about the confident gesture, the gracefully living mark made by a human being, which, unthwarted by additional parameters, speaks the universal language of the human spirit.
Steven Skaggs
There are no [calligraphy] authorities. Listen carefully, take notes, but believe only what you experience.
Tina Vickers
It is the words that are read, but the calligraphy that is felt.
Steven Skaggs
Calligraphy is the most direct form of all artistic expression. Just as each movement of the dancer is absolute, so every gesture of the calligrapher is essential. It is not the meaning of the character but the writing — the movement of execution and the action itself — that is important.
Tseng Yu-ho Ecke
As you work with different teachers, you may note that the truly inspirational and great ones are not dogmatic about letterform, technique or methodology.
Tina Vickers
Lettering practice will always exert a good influence in your handwriting. Rarely does anyone continue to write awkwardly if he has spent much time working with letterforms. Every cultured person ought to understand how much harmony and expressive power well-formed letters can give to a written page.
Friedrich Neugebauer
Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise
Of painting speech and speaking to the eyes?
That we, by tracing magic lines
Are taught how to embody and to colour thoughts.
William Massey
Letters are symbols which turn matter into spirit.
Alphonse de Lamartine
The letters of our Roman alphabet are like people in their infinite variety. Some are short and squat, others tall and slender; some run and caper about joyfully, others refuse to budge from their appointed places. Letters have a life of their own.
Paul Shaw
Writing has a magical force. It is a living language converted to a graphic expression.
Tim Girvin
Despite the hard work and frustration, the striving for excellence is part of the fun of lettering.
Marsha Brady
The beauty of a letter depends on the harmonious adaptation of each of its parts to every other in a well-proportioned manner so that a whole shall satisfy our aesthetic sense. A result gained only by blending together the fine strokes, stems, and swells in their proper relations.
Frederick Goudy
The making of letters in every form is for me the purest and the greatest pleasure, and at many stages of my life, it was to me what a song is to the singer, a picture to the painter, a shout to the elated, ore a sign to the oppressed. It was and is for me the most happy and perfect expression of my life.
Rudolf Koch
Lettering is my music.
Peter Thornton
Every bottle of ink contains at least one good letter … and it’s at the bottom.
Peter Thornton
Calligraphy is like crawling into a funnel from the wrong end: the farther you go, the more there is to learn and do. It is a never-ending source of pleasure.
Sheila Waters
More powerful than all poetry, more pervasive than all science, more profound than all philosophy are the letters of the alphabet, twenty-six pillars of strength upon which our culture rests.
anonymous
Geometry can produce legible letters, but art alone makes them beautiful.
Paul Standard
… the problem before us is fairly simple —To make good letters and to arrange them well.
Edward Johnston (Writing & Illuminating & Lettering)
It is well to recognize at once, the fact that mere taking to pieces, or analysing, followed by “putting together,” is only a means of becoming acquainted with the mechanism of construction, and will not reproduce the original beauty of a thing; it is an education for work, but all work which is honest and straightforward has a beauty and freshness of its own.
Edward Johnston (Writing & Illuminating & Lettering)
On spacing letters, words and lines: It is sufficient for the beginner to take care that two curved letters are made very near each other, and that two straight strokes are spaced well apart.
Edward Johnston (Writing & Illuminating & Lettering)
About practice: A broad nib is used in preference to a narrow one, so that the characteristics of true pen-work are brought out and the faults made clear.
Edward Johnston (Writing & Illuminating & Lettering)
For me, calligraphy is the physical revelation of the structure of the ideas; a reflection of the shape, texture and color of the phrases; and the integration of the words’ texture and color with their meanings.
Beth Lee
Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, also showed that printing, cursive writing and keyboard typing produces different effects in the brains of schoolchildren. She found, for example, that children who joined letters together as they wrote were able to generate more ideas and words than those who hit the keyboards — the flowing script aided not only fluency of language but also of thinking.
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1807097/hongkongers-keeping-chinese-and-western-calligraphy-alive
