Quotes About Brevity

His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.

It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.

I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dalí, who gave the world's shortest speech. He said, 'I will be so brief I am already finished' and sat down.

The difference between you and me is that: What you tell or write in hundreds of words that I express in a few words; thus, I do not waste others' time unnecessarily.

Airy elaboration just loses everyone in a fog of words.

The challenge is not to pen down a sensitivity thought with clarity and brevity, but then to make it understand or accept in totality to the vast majority.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words.

We grasp at Time, but cannot hold One minute of his treasured hour; He tarries not, though oft we pray That he will rest in youth's bright bower.

That man is sharp who can say what he wants in a minimum of words.

Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.

Cease, cows, life is short.

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

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth.

Come tutte le cose rapidamente svaniscano, nel cosmo i corpi stessi, nel tempo il loro ricordo;

for in history there is nothing more pleasing than clear and brilliant brevity.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Robert Burns said it best: "Life is but a day at most.

Commoners always use too many words when they speak.

Filter your pain through the brevity of this life and the unending beauty of the next.

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.

TO A WITHERED ROSE Thy span of life was all too short— A week or two at best— From budding-time, through blossoming, To withering and rest. Yet compensation hast thou—aye!— For all thy little woes; For was it not thy happy lot To live and die a rose?