Black lettering tattoo in a script style reading Brevity is the soul of wit, on the forearm of a person in a plaid shirt with arms crossed.

Quote in script on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a forearm showing a single line of black script lettering that reads Brevity is the soul of wit. The letterforms have fine, even linework with some shading in the thicker strokes, and the ink appears dark grey to black on the skin. The arm is crossed over the body against a plain light background and a checked shirt, with the tattoo placed centrally in the frame.

Lettering Forearm Quote Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

My dearest Ottilie,

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The Lord Chamberlain of Vellmark has asked me, for the third time this week, to write a proclamation shorter than the one he wrote himself. I have sat at the writing desk since the bells of nine, quill drying, trying to reduce the matter of the eastern tolls to something a fishmonger could read before his tea went cold. I have crossed out four hundred words. The Chamberlain says I have crossed out the wrong ones.

Yesterday I was dismissed from the Chancery for the length of my sentences and sent to the mapmakers' guild, where I was given a ruler and told to count. I counted the lanes of the Salt Road, the bridges over the Ferrin, the seven gates of the harbour city of Oriel. Each name cost me a candle. By midnight I had a single page that said everything the Chancellor needed and nothing the Chamberlain could argue with. He read it, went quiet, and then asked who had written it. When I confessed, he laughed so loudly the guards came in.

The Chamberlain has made a rule now: any document from my desk must be shorter than my signature. I have taken it as a compliment. Brevity, he says, is the soul of wit, though he will not say whose wit, and I have not told him it was Polonius who said so first, a man who never once stopped talking. I am tempted to write back in a single word. Come home. I suspect you will know what I mean.

Yours, briefly, Tobiah