#brevity

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. ↗

— Louise Brooks

#on-writing #paraphrased #inspirational

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it? ↗

— Stephen King

#brief #dreams #sweet #dreams

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

#death #story #dating

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#brevity #dwarfish #epigram #soul #whole

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon. ↗

— Edsger Dijkstra

#avoiding #brevity #jargon #while

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

#awful #brevity #desperate #effort #experience

To write good poems is the secret of brevity. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #literature #literature-quotes #poems #poetry

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." (Letter 16, 1657) ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#conciseness #correspondence #humor #letters #pithy

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. ↗

— George Burns

#humor #religion #humor

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

#brevity #humor #art