Another Kid Story

I'm distracted with stuff today (and perhaps tomorrow) so faithful readers will have to settle for another kid story.  This one involves the 12-year-old, as he embarks on eighth grade.  Anyway--so, I'm told, the  "English teacher tasked them with decorating their binder cover with 1) at least 4 colors; 2) at least two images; 3) filling most of the space on the cover"   (the question whether coloring has any place in the eighth grade English curriculum is left as an exercise to the reader).  The young man 

decided to go with the English language theme.  So he carefully drew a manuscript page, a feather pen and an ink bottle, and a broken sword.  Then he added a quotation: 

True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!

 --Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Then he added his own quote:

But the pencil is even better.

...and duly subscribed his own name.  "He was very amused," UB's correspondent reports,  "when I told him he had picked a quotation from an author famed for his bombast and purple prose... ."