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'This', elucidated the prince, highly elated, 'is the personal signature of the Abbot Paphnutius copied from a manuscript of the fourteenth century. They had splendid signatures, all our old abbots and metropolitans, such exquisite style sometimes and such care! ... Here's another beautiful and original script, the phrase here: "Zeal conquers all." It's a Russian script, a clerk's or, if you prefer, military clerk's script. An official letter to an important personage would be written in this way. It's also a rounded script, splendid and black, wirtten in black but with excellent style. A calligraphist would not have allowed these flourishes or rather these attempted flourishes, these unfinished half-tails here, you see, and yet taken altogether they have a character of their own, look, really the entire soul of the orderly clerk peeps out: it wants to spread its wings and the skill is there, but the military collar is tightly fastened, discipline comes out in the script as well, wonderful! ... Then there's this simple, ordinary, clean-as-clean English script: elegance can go no further, it's pure delight, like a pearl necklace; that's perfection, but here's a variation, French again, I got it from a French commercial traveller: the same English script, but the black line's just a touch blacker and thicker than in the English, so the balance of light and shade is disturbed; note also: the oval is altered, just a touch rounder and a flourish has been permitted--the most dangerous thing of all! A flourish demands rare taste; but if it succeeds, if the proportion should be found, then this script is incomparable, one might even fall in love with it.'

--Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot, trans. by Alan Myers