Quotes About Brevity
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A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. ~ William Strunk Jr.
[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion. ~ Anton Chekhov
Given the brevity of our time here, it does seem likely that our species, too, must have at best a blinkered understanding of the shape of things, the import of certain events and what distinguishes 'good' from 'bad' luck. ~ Karen Russell
It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke. ~ Maureen Johnson
She has never understood, nor been able to relate to a herd mentality. She doesn't get along with followers and avoids the bandwagon. She marches to her own tune and does it alone. She's despised by the weak-minded and respected by the strong. She ruffles the feathers of the flock because she champion's the defenseless and pick's on the mob. Does she wish she could not give a damn and live an ordinary life surrounded by nodding and needy ordinary people? At times ... but she'd be bored out of her mind when she's never bored alone, and because of that she's patient because a couple of times in a lifetime she's lucky enough to come across a memorable, magnetic and remarkable person - one worth knowing, even if just for the brevity of a conversation. ~ Donna Lynn Hope
If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea. ~ David Belasco
Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously. ~ Junot Diaz
The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy
The brevity of mini (psycho)therapies is another efficient forestaller of healing. The neocortex rapidly master didactic information, but the limbic brain takes mountains of repetition. No one expects to play the flute in six lessons or to become fluent in Italian in ten. (189) ~ Thomas Lewis
It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. ~ Louise Brooks
Jurists, with rare exceptions, are unconsciously and tenaciously averse to clarity and brevity. ~ Gianrico Carofiglio
Fulgham's team started by coming up with more than one thousand scenarios in which Sentinel could be useful, everything from inputting victims' statements to tracking evidence to interfacing with FBI databases that looked for patterns among clues. Then they started working backward to figure out what kind of software should accommodate each need. Every morning, the team conducted a "stand-up" - meetings where everyone stood to encourage brevity - and recounted the previous day's work and what they hoped to accomplish over the next twenty-four hours. ~ Charles Duhigg
Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth is born at his rival's doing or within himself from some change in his ideas. ~ Michel De Montaigne
Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity. ~ Antonio Porchia
A man's perspective is limited by the brevity of his existence.
Even living deliberately, how far up can we reach?
Standing on our miniscule patch of time, how far into the future can we see? How much of the past can one truly understand?
Yet, only a recreant spends their precious drops of sand before dropping back
into the abyss lounging in indulgence, not striving for understanding, knowledge,
answers that those of us
scourged/consecrated with consciousness
should seek with unconquerable passion. ~ Alpha Four
A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple and vigorous. The greatest writers have the gift of brilliant brevity, are hard workers, diligent scholars and competent stylists. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy. ~ Ali Smith
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. ~ William Zinsser
Very Like a Whale
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have
to go out
of their way to say that it is like something else.
What foes it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot
of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus
hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf
on
the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there
are
a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple
and gold
cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red
mouth and
big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Fra ~ Ogden Nash
I love story-writing because I can (more or less, on occasion) actually DO it. That's really the truth. I like the idea that a story is sort of a site for making cool language effects - a site for celebrating language, and, therefore, the world. And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them - I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode. ~ George Saunders
Brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, ~ William Shakespeare
The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity - but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin
But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand. ~ George Eliot
The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality. ~ Russell Baker
Brevity in writing is
what charity is to all other virtues - righteousness is nothing
without the one,
nor authorship without the other. ~ Sydney Smith
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer. ~ William Penn
It is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end. ~ Winifred Holtby
Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end. ~ Saint Ignatius
The Bible has much to say about the brevity of life and the necessity of preparing for eternity. I am convinced that only when a man is prepared to die is he also prepared to live. ~ Billy Graham
The dusty tombs of long-dead exorcist priests lay in the alcoves below, surmounted by stone effigies, the features eroded by the passing of time and the reverent caresses of their grateful parishioners, a reminder, she knew all too well, of the brevity of life. ~ Sarah Ash
There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on. ~ Horace
The art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none. This above all: to thine own self be true. No legacy is so rich as honesty. Brevity is the soul of wit ~ William Shakespeare
His bed was where they slept and where the great thing people warned about or giggled about took place. It was not so much painful as dull. Cee thought it would get better later. Better turned out to be simply more, and while the quantity increased, its pleasure lay in its brevity. ~ Toni Morrison
More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation; indeed, young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason, the state should, in all seriousness, take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors. A ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through ~ Mohsin Hamid
With vivid words your just conceptions grace,
Much truth compressing in a narrow space;
Then many shall peruse, but few complain,
And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. ~ John Wolcot
Brevity is a great charm of eloquence. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to the dream-like quality of our lives, their brevity, mutability and lack of solid grounds. As such, by reminding us of our mortality, it can foster in us the virtue of humility. ~ Terry Eagleton
Say farewell to luck when winning. It is the way of the gamblers of reputation. Quite as important as a gallant advance is a well-planned retreat. Lock up your winnings when they are enough, or when great. Continuous luck is always suspect; more secure is that which changes. Though half bitter and half sweet, it is more satisfying to the taste. The more luck pyramids, the greater the danger of slip and collapse. For luck always compensates her intensity by her brevity. Fortune wearies of carrying anyone long upon her shoulders. ~ Baltasar Gracian
The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life. ~ Vita Sackville-West
Ursula declined, fearing enchantment. ~ Kate Atkinson
The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situation. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help us, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted. ~ Aldous Huxley
If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. ~ Woodrow Wilson
A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity ... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
From her character in the HBO miniseries: The art of politics is the art of applying the seat of the britches to the seat of the chair. ~ Abigail Adams
If variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being perserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offsping similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. ~ Charles Darwin
Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~ Dorothy Parker
Life in all its brevity deserved to be lived, for the right reasons. Belonging Places. ~ M.R. Weston
If you are not brave, say you are, then be it. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker
In the pleading of cases nothing pleases so much as brevity. ~ Pliny The Younger
My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. ~ William Shakespeare
Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means. ~ Bela Bartok
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. ~ Blaise Pascal
A few sentences are enough to tell the truth. ~ Robert Sarah
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity. ~ Jean De La Bruyere
Be brief on the logic and reason portion of your presentation. There are probably about a thousand facts about an automobile, but you don't need them all to make a decision. About a half dozen will do. ~ Jim Rohn
Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins. ~ Michael Winter
Vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment. ~ David Brooks
You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood. ~ Hector Hugh Munro
It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...
She entered the hall at the same time he did from the opposite side. With a cry that told her exactly how worried she'd been about him, she raced into his arms.
She could hear the reverberation of his laugh in his chest as he lifted her up and spun her in his arms. Still in his embrace, he set her feet back on the ground and pressed a quick kiss on her lips, the brevity of which she suspected was due to their audience. His voice was low and husky. "Miss me?"
-Kenneth Sutherland & Mary of Mar ~ Monica McCarty
The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers. * ~ Liu Cixin
I sense a hint of bitterness in this letter of yours and in a previous one. Excellent: we are living in a dark period, there is absolutely nothing going right, and the only consolation we have is to think about the brevity of life. I have to say that in this situation I am absolutely fine, and I am giving myself up finally to total misanthropy, which I now discover corresponds fully to my true nature. But you seem to be still anxious about something or other. Ha, ha! Don't worry, it will just get worse and worse. ~ Italo Calvino
Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston
I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes
Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity. ~ Thomas Ken
I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity. ~ Barack Obama
Some people talk too much without saying a lot. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life ~ Protagoras
The fewer the words, the better you're heard! ~ Chinonye J. Chidolue
A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. ~ Owen Feltham
Life is too short to waste being a productive member of society. ~ Sol Luckman
In his New Yorker column of July 27, 1957, E. B. White praised the "little book" as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English. ~ William Strunk Jr.
I am, sir. It is my way - it always was my way, by instinct - ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness. ~ Charlotte Bronte
Brevity is the soul of wit. ~ Alexander Pope
O Weep No More For
Me When I Am Gone! ~ Timothy Salter
Clarity of thought is a must for brevity in speech. ~ Somali K Chakrabarti
Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader's or listener's life. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
(Letter 16, 1657) ~ Blaise Pascal
Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon. ~ Edsger Dijkstra
It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
We both felt that the chief virtue of an interpreter consists in clarity combined with brevity. And ~ John Calvin
On the Brevity of Our Ties
Ties in this world last only for a time. We are husband and wife, parent and child, for a short period only. Once this reality sinks in, we cannot help treasuring each moment of our brief association. ~ Kentetsu Takamori
Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is ... how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that." Nicholai's imagination was galvanized by the concept of shibumi. No other ideal had ever touched him so. "How does one achieve this shibumi, sir?" "One does not achieve it, one ... discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san." "Meaning that one must learn a great deal to arrive at shibumi?" "Meaning, rather, that one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity. ~ Trevanian
This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity. ~ Brandon Sanderson
If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays. ~ Joseph John Thomson
Falling as deeply in love with as many people, places, and things as you possibly can -- that's the best revenge on the unjust brevity of this fragile life. ~ Marc Parent
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
There came to him an image of man's whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all man's life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all man's grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all-engulfing night. ~ Thomas Wolfe
Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. I ~ Jack Kornfield
Happiness can not be prescribed, postponed or preserved.
Relish its unpredictability. Cherish its exclusivity. Accept its brevity. But above all savour its delicious exquisiteness. Do not let it go cold! ~ Dimity Powell
I often find that when a ruthless editor forces me to trim an article to fit into a certain number of column-inches, the quality of my prose improves as if by magic. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of many other virtues in writing. ~ Steven Pinker
Anxiety could fill up the darkness with all the monsters it wished, but if Brevity tried very hard, maybe she could squeeze in one monster of her own. ~ A.J. Hackwith
Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The word itself has another color. It's not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn't the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow's deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn't violet's rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green. ~ William H Gass
The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. ~ Bede
My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself. ~ David Starkey
Philosophy is the theory of multiplicities, each of which is composed of actual and virtual elements. Purely actual objects do not exist. Every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images. This cloud is composed of a series of more or less extensive coexisting circuits, along which the virtual images are distributed, and around which they run. These virtuals vary in kind as well as in their degree of proximity from the actual particles by which they are both emitted and absorbed. They are called virtual in so far as their emission and absorption, creation and destruction, occur in a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable; it is this very brevity that keeps them subject to a principle of uncertainty or indetermination. The virtuals, encircling the actual, perpetually renew themselves by emitting yet others, with which they are in turn surrounded and which go on in turn to react upon the actual: 'in the heart of the cloud of the virtual there is a virtual of a yet higher order ... every virtual particle surrounds itself with a virtual cosmos and each in its turn does likewise indefinitely.' It is the dramatic identity of their dynamics that makes a perception resemble a particle: an actual perception surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images, distributed on increasingly remote, increasingly large, moving circuits, which both make and unmake each other. These are memories of different sorts, but they are still called virtual images ~ Gilles Deleuze