Brevity Quotes and Sayings - Page 2



If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.
Dennis Roth

“In good prose (says Schlegel) every word should be underlined!” that is, every word should be the right one; and then no one would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato.
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself…Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
Mark Twain

He replies nothing but monosyllables. I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
Rabelais, Pantagruel

What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
Branch Rickey

If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.
David Belasco

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use short and positive speech.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

FOUR FLOWERS The Sun Arose in Morning Glory with His Goldenrod Wanding Violet to Rose.
Saiom Shriver

There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.
Horace

For brevity is very good, where we are, or are not understood.
Samuel Butler

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams–the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Robert Southey

Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.
Antonio Porchia

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.
Cicero

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