Top 100 Quotes About Brevity
#1. 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
#3. The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#4. The brevity of his life makes the sky a dark lid against which he will forever crack his head, to fall back onto earth, where everything alive eats and can be eaten.
Milan Kundera
#5. I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
Mohsin Hamid
#6. The definition of Brevity: That which people believe would be a virtue - in me!
Greg Curtis
#7. Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
Hosea Ballou
#8. My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
#9. Roxy had once called him the Pussy Whisperer, and it had kind of stuck. For the sake of brevity, though, they simply called him P-Dub.
Tessa Bailey
#10. Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.
Michael Winter
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. What poet's persuasion can reconcile the length of those days with the brevity of life?
Rainer Maria Rilke
#14. This is not about the mere extension of life along a horizontal plane, but about the deepening of life along a vertical plane. Mere longevity cannot render life meaningful any more than brevity has the power to make it meaningless.
Peter Rollins
#16. 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
#17. Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material.
Marcus Aurelius
#18. 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
#19. I won't ask for forgiveness, but I am so very sorry," he said, with the simple brevity she was learning to expect. She pressed her lips into his soft, dark hair. "I know." He
Renee Ahdieh
#20. This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.
Rudyard Kipling
#21. Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
#22. Youth, balancing itself upon hope, is forever in extremes: its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled, and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#23. In an age that valued prolonged and detailed exposition, complexity, and repetition it was astonishing that Luther should have instinctively discerned the value of brevity.
Andrew Pettegree
#24. 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
#26. 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
#29. At our noblest we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.
Cormac McCarthy
#31. 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
#33. The next message was from Roy Lindell. He also followed the standard of brevity. All right, asshole, I've got something for you. Call me.
Michael Connelly
#34. The land is not old. It only changes, becoming one thing and the next. We are the ones who ascribe age, the brevity of our lives demanding a beginning, middle and end.
Craig Childs
#35. Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#36. True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#38. It is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.
Winifred Holtby
#39. Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.
Thomas Ken
#40. 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 ...
#41. Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything. How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility?
Andre Comte-Sponville
#42. What else?"
Nothing," Dogger said. "Just sign it. "Kings prefer brevity.
Alan Bradley
#43. 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
#44. The single most frustrating and saddening aspect of human life is its shocking brevity.
Sean DeLauder
#45. 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
#46. We both felt that the chief virtue of an interpreter consists in clarity combined with brevity. And
John Calvin
#47. Good similes depend upon close observation. They depend upon brevity and wit ... They have to fit in context.
James J. Kilpatrick
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.
Horace
#52. Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.
Martial
#53. 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
#55. 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
#56. Storytelling is shaped by two contrary, yet complementary, impulses - one toward brevity, compactness, artful omission; the other toward expansion, amplification, enrichment.
Joyce Carol Oates
#57. If brevity is the soul of wit then brevity and levity are the whole of it.
Michael R. Burch
#58. It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.
Maureen Johnson
#59. 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
#60. Life in all its brevity deserved to be lived, for the right reasons. Belonging Places.
M.R. Weston
#62. [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
#63. 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.
#64. This is going to take a while. I'm a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.
Brandon Sanderson
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life
Protagoras
#68. Jurists, with rare exceptions, are unconsciously and tenaciously averse to clarity and brevity.
Gianrico Carofiglio
#69. Let us return to 'no'. It has the charm of brevity.
Sharon Lee
#70. 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
#71. Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.
Antonio Porchia
#72. 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
#73. Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.
Theophile Gautier
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.
Billy Graham
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. Brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
William Shakespeare
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. Characteristic of such affective equivalents is their brevity - manic-depressive cycles, as generally understood, occupy several weeks, and frequently longer. Monthly
Oliver Sacks
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through
Mohsin Hamid
#93. 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
#94. Brevity in writing is
what charity is to all other virtues - righteousness is nothing
without the one,
nor authorship without the other.
Sydney Smith
#97. Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
Jean De La Bruyere
#98. Filter your pain through the brevity of this life and the unending beauty of the next.
Max Lucado
#99. If human lives be,
for their very brevity, sweet,
then beast lives are sweeter still ...
Isobelle Carmody
#100. To Dewey, if brevity was the soul of wit, stagecraft was the very center of politics.
David Pietrusza
