Top 100 Brevity's Quotes
#1. If the hand be held between the discharge-tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow-image of the hand itself ... For brevity's sake I shall use the expression 'rays'; and to distinguish them from others of this name I shall call them 'X-rays'.
Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen
#2. 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.
#4. [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
#5. Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it?
Stephen King
#6. 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
#7. 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
#9. 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
#10. If human lives be,
for their very brevity, sweet,
then beast lives are sweeter still ...
Isobelle Carmody
#11. Brevity in writing is
what charity is to all other virtues - righteousness is nothing
without the one,
nor authorship without the other.
Sydney Smith
#14. What can the redwoods tell us about ourselves? Well, I think they can tell us something about human time. The flickering, transitory quality of human time and the brevity of human life - the necessity to love.
Richard Preston
#15. To Dewey, if brevity was the soul of wit, stagecraft was the very center of politics.
David Pietrusza
#16. Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
Jean De La Bruyere
#17. Filter your pain through the brevity of this life and the unending beauty of the next.
Max Lucado
#18. I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.
Annie Proulx
#19. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying I love you.
Judith Viorst
#20. I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
(Letter 16, 1657)
Blaise Pascal
#22. Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.
Rudolf Virchow
#23. Because of the brevity of life, the Bible warns that we should be prepared to meet God at all times.
Billy Graham
#24. 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
#25. When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.
William Strunk Jr.
#26. A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work.
Don Marquis
#27. Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.
Horace
#28. What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?
Rainer Maria Rilke
#29. For effective communication, use brevity. Jesus said, 'Follow me.' Now that's brief! He could be brief because of all that he was that he didn't have to say.
Jim Rohn
#30. He says to land," Tharkay translated, with improbable brevity; at Laurence's frowning look he added, "and he calls us a great many impolite names; do you wish them all translated?
Naomi Novik
#31. There are risks in the sheer brevity of Twitter, and it's actually quite an elegant art reducing what you have to say to 140 characters, and it's something that I quite enjoy attempting to do.
Richard Dawkins
#32. The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit : put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.
Iris Murdoch
#33. We both felt that the chief virtue of an interpreter consists in clarity combined with brevity. And
John Calvin
#34. Good similes depend upon close observation. They depend upon brevity and wit ... They have to fit in context.
James J. Kilpatrick
#35. 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
#36. The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it.
Michel Houellebecq
#37. Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.
Louise Brooks
#38. A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.
George Saunders
#39. 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
#41. Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.
Martial
#42. 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
#44. No sooner did we start than it all came to an end.
Ahmed Mostafa
#45. 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
#46. Storytelling is shaped by two contrary, yet complementary, impulses - one toward brevity, compactness, artful omission; the other toward expansion, amplification, enrichment.
Joyce Carol Oates
#47. If brevity is the soul of wit then brevity and levity are the whole of it.
Michael R. Burch
#48. It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.
Maureen Johnson
#49. One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.
Patricia Marx
#50. Life in all its brevity deserved to be lived, for the right reasons. Belonging Places.
M.R. Weston
#52. I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
Robert Frost
#53. 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
#54. The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.
Billy Graham
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#60. Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.
Theophile Gautier
#61. After spending the last few years working on a serious novel set in Chechnya, I was drawn to both the brevity and casualness of Twitter, and wrote a series of tweets titled 'The Erotic Inner Life of Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey.'
Anthony Marra
#62. Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.
Antonio Porchia
#63. 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
#65. 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
#66. Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.
Blaise Pascal
#67. Let us return to 'no'. It has the charm of brevity.
Sharon Lee
#68. Jurists, with rare exceptions, are unconsciously and tenaciously averse to clarity and brevity.
Gianrico Carofiglio
#69. We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary.
Jose Saramago
#70. Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life
Protagoras
#71. The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism - an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own.
Kathryn Schulz
#72. 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
#73. Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis.
(Whatever advice you give, be brief.)
Horace
#74. I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.
Gerald R. Ford
#75. This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.
Brandon Sanderson
#76. It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#77. 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
#80. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.
Walter Pater
#82. Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to 'lay it on' in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.
Noah Lukeman
#83. There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.
Horace
#84. For the sake of brevity, we will always represent this number 2.718281828459 ... by the letter e.
Leonhard Euler
#85. 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
#86. Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through
Mohsin Hamid
#87. 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
#89. 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,
#90. Characteristic of such affective equivalents is their brevity - manic-depressive cycles, as generally understood, occupy several weeks, and frequently longer. Monthly
Oliver Sacks
#92. 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
#93. Girls, well, when God was coding their speech pattern, he deliberately left out the brevity parameter. He probably had a good laugh, and did the needful to the other kind to maintain the balance.
Rajat Mishra
#94. I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Mark Twain
#95. Brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
William Shakespeare
#96. 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
#97. Life is too short to waste being a productive member of society.
Sol Luckman
#98. What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms?
Mark Twain
#100. He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?
Martial
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