Black script lettering reading without struggle there is no progress, a fine line lettering tattoo on the side ribs of a person wearing a dark top.

Script quote tattoo on the side ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo is a four-line quotation in black, cursive script reading "without struggle there is no progress", with "struggle" and "no" written larger and looped across the other lines. The linework is thin and even, with no visible shading, and the ink is a dark, uniform black on warm skin. The text sits diagonally across the side of the torso, with a dark fabric edge visible at the top left of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Ribs Quote Script Text Word

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

Dear Tom,

Keep reading

The top gate at Thornber stuck again on Tuesday, and I spent the whole morning leaning into the beam while the water sulked in the chamber below. Mrs Ibbotson from the narrowboat Clementine stood on the towpath with a flask and told me I was too old for it. I told her she was too old to be drinking tea before eleven. We both laughed, and then the gate gave all at once, the way they do, and nearly took my hat.

You will remember the card on the kitchen wall at home. Your nan wrote it out in her careful hand the winter she was ill, and it has hung above the kettle ever since, the big words looped across the small ones so nobody could miss them: without struggle there is no progress. I used to think it was the sort of thing people stitch onto tea towels. Now I think she wrote it for a stubborn man who would one day be too proud to ask for help with a lock.

You said on the phone that I should sell the cottage and let the canal go to the hire boats and the men with their laminated maps. Perhaps you are right. But every gate I have ever fought open has been worth the ache, and I would rather hand you a stiff pair of hands than an empty set of keys. Come up at Easter. Bring your old boots. The bottom paddles need a second pair of shoulders, and the water is already rising.

Love, Dad