Black line drawing of a tattoo design with angular symbols above a horizontal rule and the italic words God is greater than the highs and lows, on a white background.

God is greater than the highs and lows lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The design shows a small set of angular black symbols resembling G, a chevron and a V-shaped mark, sitting above a thin horizontal line. Beneath the line, the italic serif text reads God is greater than the highs and lows, set in two centred lines. The linework is clean and uniform, with no shading or colour, on a plain white background.

Lettering Text Quote Symbol Line

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 benchmark stone at Cold Harbour Cross had been levelled twice before Ruth Carvell was sent out to check it, and both surveyors had written the same line in the ledger: nothing moves here but the wind. She wrapped her scarf over her mouth against the grit and set the tripod over the brass pin. The road ran pale across the moor, rising and falling like someone breathing under a sheet.

Keep reading

Her uncle Joseph had taught her the old notation at the kitchen table, scratching it on the backs of invoices. A capital G was the datum, God, the only reference he said never needed checking. The chevron marked anything that stood above it, the V anything that dipped below, and he always drew a line beneath them for the horizon. "Everything you measure sits between those two," he told her, "and the thing at the top of the page is the thing you never reach." She had taken it for a joke about the council.

The readings came in the hot afternoon, the bubble steady, the staff held by a farm boy who kept glancing at the sky. Heights of the tors, the slump of the verge after the flood, the drop into the wadi where the old tramway had gone. Every figure fell somewhere between the limits, and for once she did not bother writing out the sum. She sat on the cool stone and let the numbers settle.

Before she packed up, she scratched the notation into the lip of the pin with the point of her pencil: the G, the arrow, the V, and a line under all three. The wind took the metal dust away almost before she could blow on it. Driving back, she watched the road climb and fall in her mirror until the stone was only a small pale tooth on the horizon, and she found she was humming, not quite sure of the words.