Quotes About Conciseness

When poetry is on the money, 12 words can slay you. I admire that greatly.

Nature operates in the shortest way possible.

If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments [if] one suffices.

Radite na tome da budete elokventni.Vecina njih zna samo da prica, mnogo vise nego sto treba.

You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

Less is more, in prose as in architecture.

Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

I've always felt that a really good joke, a really good one-liner, is a really good line of poetry. It's imagistic, it's compact, there is a rhythm to it.

We live longerbut less preciselyand in shorter sentences.

There is more power in telling little than in telling all.

There's a tremendous power in using the least amount of information to get a point across.

Vigorous writing is concise.

You don't have to speak much if you speak well," Meloux replied.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

A proverb has three characteristics: few words, good sense, and a fine image.

Good enough to tweet, not to say.

If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.

Never say more than is necessary.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.