Black ink tattoo of the words THIS TOO SHALL PASS in capital sans-serif letters, with an arrow at each end, across the inner forearm.

Arrow and quote lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a forearm showing the words THIS TOO SHALL PASS in black capital letters, set in a clean sans-serif typeface. A simple arrow runs off each end of the phrase, with a feathered fletching detail on the left arrow. The ink is solid black on pale skin, and the phrase sits diagonally across the arm against a soft, plain background.

Lettering Forearm Arrow Quote Text Phrase

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind came off the Pennines at half past four, just as the vicar was reading the register, and by five the back marquee at Cold Harbour Farm was bellying like a sail. I had put the king poles in myself that morning, with Joe Sharrock swearing at the guy ropes, and I knew exactly which one was going to go. It was the north pole. It always was. You could hear it groan through the canvas like a ship's timber.

Keep reading

Nobody else knew. The bride's mother was counting chairs. The DJ was testing a microphone that kept whistling. So I stood in the mud in my good shoes and watched the pole lean, and I thought of my nan, who used to say the same thing whenever the weather turned on her: this too shall pass. She said it over burnt toast and over funerals, and it annoyed me then because it sounded like giving up. It isn't. It's the thing you say while you are still holding the rope.

The pole went at twenty past five with a crack like a rifle. Canvas came down over the trestle tables, over the sponge cake, over a tray of prosecco nobody had yet drunk. Somebody screamed, then somebody laughed, and then the whole party was out in the rain with paper napkins stuck to their shoes, shrieking and hauling at the fabric as if it were a fish.

By seven the sky had cleared to a thin green line over the moor. We ate the wedding breakfast under the barn rafters, and the bride told everyone that the storm was the best omen she had ever heard of. I did not argue. I went out to the field after, where the pole lay in the grass, and I sat on it for a while, and I watched a V of geese go over, pointing somewhere warmer.