Quotes About Conciseness

If you can't reduce your argument to a few crisp words and phrases, there's something wrong with your argument.

More words ain't good for anything in the world only to bring on more argument.

Art is the exclusion of the unnecessary.

More matter with less art.

Robert Creely's poems have two main characteristics. 1) They are short; 2) they are not short enough.

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. —Freeman Dyson

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Actually it's very simple, but simple things are always the hardest to explain.

Every element in a design should be expressed to the extent necessary, but not beyond the extent necessary. Excess is noise.

It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.

It is futile to do with more things, that which can be done with less.

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.

More matter with less art.

Since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity.

Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Anything that can be said can be said clearly.

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.

Get to the bloody point!' She