Traditional style colour tattoo on a forearm showing a compass in a rope border, a blue and red anchor and the words Let your past be your compass but never your anchor.

Compass, rope and anchor quote on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A compass with a rope border sits at the top of the design, with a rope running down the left side beside a block of black capitals reading the quote. A blue anchor with red accents and a brown wooden handle sits to the right of the text, with the rope wrapping around its shank. The bold outlines and flat areas of solid colour are set against pale skin on a plain light background.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Compass Rope Anchor Quote Lettering

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

Mrs Pellow keeps the brass compass on the hall table of Sandhaven House, its needle long since stuck pointing at the umbrella stand, and every morning she taps the glass as you pass with your bag. You have been here nine days. You have eaten nine breakfasts of kippers and not one word of your reasons, and she has not asked, which is the reason you stayed.

Keep reading

On the tenth morning she finds you on the back step with the sampler that hangs above the scullery sink. Someone stitched it in black wool generations back, the letters crowding as if they ran out of room: let your past be your compass but never your anchor. The blue anchor in the corner has a red stripe at its crown where the thread gave out. 'My Tom painted that,' she says, lowering herself onto the cold stone beside you. 'Twenty years on the Penzance boats, and he never once read the thing properly.'

She tells you what Tom understood, which was not what the words suggest. A compass shows where you have been and which way the coast lies. An anchor is what you drop when you are frightened of open water. He dropped his in Mount's Bay the spring the Lizzie Ann went down, and he stayed in the harbour thirty years, mending nets and watching the boats go out without him. The rope on the sampler, she says, is the only part of him that ever moved.

The tide is making. Mrs Pellow stands, takes the boarding-house key from her apron and sets it on the compass glass, where the needle shivers and finally settles, pointing at the sea. 'Breakfast is at seven,' she says. 'The kippers won't wait.'