Quotes about Conciseness
First be sure that you know exactly what you want to say. Then be sure you have said exactly that.
- CS Lewis
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
- Samuel Johnson
Less is only more where more is no good.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]
- Henry David Thoreau
Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to shorten it.
- Henry David Thoreau
Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.
- Cicero
Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
- George Eliot
Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
- Mark Twain
The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say, "in other words...."
- Robert Brault
The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.
- Albert Einstein
Make things as simple as possible but no simpler
- Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
- Albert Einstein