Quotessence
Home / Topics / Brevity Quotes

Brevity Quotes

Browse 188 quotes about Brevity.

Related topics

WritingIfsBookBrevity Of LifeLongSoulWitHumansIdeasExtremesGivingHuman LifeInspirationalShouldStoriesWhole

Brevity Quotes

“Brevity Is Best: Nicknamed "Silent Cal," President Calvin Coolidge was once challenged by a reporter, saying, "I bet someone that I could get more than two words out of you." Coolidge responded, "You lose." The notion of crafting six word memoirs really took off after Smith Magazine shared this poignant one written by Ernest Hemingway: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn." Pithiness Pays Off For Other Reasons: When required to be brief, for example, we gain clarity about what we really mean -- or have to offer. As Mark Twain once wrote, in a slower-paced time, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

FameBrevityStand OutPithiness
Book:Mutuality Matters How You Can Create More Opportunity, Adventure & Friendship With Others
Create image

“The words are few, and the sentence short; no one in Scripture so short. But it fareth with Sentences as with coynes: In coines, they that in smallest compasse conteine greatest value, are best esteemed: and, in sentences, those that in fewest words comprise most matter, are most praised. Which, as of all sentences it is true; so specially of those that are marked with Memento. In them, the shorter the better; the better, and the better carried away, and the better kept; and the better called for when we need it. And such is this here; of rich contents, and with all exceeding compendious: So that, we must needs be without all excuse, it being but three words, and but five syllables, if we doe not remember it.”

WritingBibleBrevity
Book:Lancelot Andrewes: Selected Sermons and Lectures
Create image

“When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius , in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that "brevity is the soul of wit" (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet 's Madness.”

NeedsLooksLongSoulMomentsCoursesWiseSourceImportanceMadnessWitClarityObservationExplanationNecksLengthFloodCompetingBrevityConjectureGiraffePoloniusRare MomentsMoments Of Clarity
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“"What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?" a university student asked me several years ago. "The brevity of it," I replied without hesitation. Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4).”

YearsLongSaidMatterDoneMovingNightFoundJesusOur LivesStudentsYears AgoSurpriseUniversityWho We AreHesitationBrevityUniversity Students
Author:Billy Graham
Create image

“Much of the magical effect that poetry gives of rendering everything it touches pellucid comes from the necessity of compression that it imposes. The impossibility of pausing in poetry as long as may be needed to make sense clear causes many a set of words actually deficient in linguistic workmanship to pass for an eloquent brevity.”

GivingMayLongCausesClearEffectsNeededMake SenseImpossibilityEloquentBrevityRenderingPausingWorkmanshipCompression
Author:Laura Riding
Create image

“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.”

MayPoetryClearEffectsProduceMereProfoundEndureBrilliantSteadyNow And ThenStampsVividDegeneratesBrevity
Book:Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Essays, Literary Studies, Criticism, Cryptography & Autography, Translations, Letters and Other Non-Fiction Works: The Philosophy of Composition, The Rationale of Verse, The Poetic Principle, Old English Poetry, Maelzel's Chess Player, Eureka, The Literati of New York, Fifty Suggestions, Exordium, Marginalia…
Create image