Quotes on brevity
My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Parker, Dorothy
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
Smith, Sydney
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Jefferson, Thomas
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books - what other men do not say in whole books.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.
Pascal, Blaise
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Gracian, Baltasar
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.
Roth, Dennis
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.
Strunk, William
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Southey, Robert
He replies nothing but monosyllables. I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
Rabelais, François
If you bring that sentence in for a fitting, I can have it shortened by Wednesday.
Unknown, Author
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
Rickey, Branch
If any man will draw up his case, and put his name at the foot of the first page, I will give him an immediate reply. Where he compels me to turn over the sheet, he must wait my leisure.
Sandwich, Lord