Small fine line black lettering reading mind over matter, with a horizontal line between the words, on a person's lower abdomen above the waistband.

Mind over matter fine line lettering

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a small tattoo on the side of a torso, just above the waistband of dark clothing. The words mind and matter are written in thin, single-weight black linework, with a horizontal rule between them so they read like a fraction. The background is soft and warm-toned, and the tattoo is the clear focus of the composition.

Fine line Lettering Other Quote Text

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 brass weights lived in a walnut case in the back room of Hollis and Daughter, Weights and Measures, off Fitzwilliam Street in Sheffield, and on the night Agnes Pell came in with the cracked pocket watch, the gas lamps outside were already hissing the way they did before rain. She set the watch on the counter as if it were a bird that had flown into a window. Mr Hollis was at the bench with his spectacles pushed up into his hair, and he did not look up.

Keep reading

"Mind's not the trouble," he said. "Mind's the easy bit. It's the matter that won't sit still." He lifted a steel balance from its hook, laid the watch face down on the pan, and tapped the arm until the needle settled at true. "Divide what you want by what you've got. That's the whole sum. Most folk leave out the line in the middle and then wonder why nothing comes out even."

Agnes asked what the line was for. He took a card from the drawer, wrote mind above and matter below in a hand so small it looked like thread, and drew a single stroke between them with the side of his nib. "Some nights I think it's only a rule a man draws so he needn't look at the bottom of the page," he said. "Other nights it's the only honest thing on the card."

He worked for an hour while she sat on the high stool and listened to the escapement ticking back to life under the glass, quick and then steady, until the sound filled the room the way a kettle fills a kitchen. When he finally closed the case, the watch was going, and the hands read a quarter past midnight, which was a time nobody in Sheffield believed in any more. He wrote the bill on the same card, under the line: labour, nothing; parts, nothing; the rest, one shilling. Agnes paid in coppers. He left the bottom of the page blank, because the bottom was always the part you carried home yourself.