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Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
--
Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus s?vior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.

 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place, Is the Pen Mightier than the Sword? A Successful Career in the Civil Service.

 

James Joyce

 

A family portrait not too stale to record
Of a pleasant old buffer, nephew to a lord,
Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword,
And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad:
Just like an old liberal
Between the wars.

 

William Plomer

 

When I quoted Bulwer Lytton's "The pen is mightier than the sword" to Marty Feldman he added reflectively, "Yes, and considerably easier to write with."

 

Marty Feldman

 

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.

 

Thomas Carlyle

 

Knowing the Way of the long sword means we can wield with two fingers the sword that we usually carry. If we know the path of the sword well, we can wield it easily.
If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield the long sword well you must wield it calmly. If you try to wield it quickly, like a folding fan or a short sword, you will err by using "short sword chopping". You cannot cut a man with a long sword using this method.

 

Miyamoto Musashi