Quotes About Clarity

The wrong answer is the right answer to a different question.

when you reach a point where you can distinguish between the things you thought you wanted and the things you actually need, that is an epiphany.

Describe the situation as you see it without exaggerating, making judgments, or explaining how you feel about it.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

He who is grasped by the one thing that is needed has the many things under his feet. They concern him but not ultimately, and when he loses them he does not lose the one thing he needs and that cannot be taken from him.

Everything simple is false. Everything complex is unusable.

How can one not feel enthusiasm for the man who never said anything vague?

But hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind.

You can never be too subtle, and you can never be too simple.

Une difficulté est une lumière. Une difficulté insurmontable est un soleil.

The truth is overrated.

It was hard to reassure grown-ups when you weren't certain yourself what you were feeling and thinking—when thoughts dissolved before you could name them.

Words are nets through which all truth escapes ("News From The World")

When he had first known her, the violent decisiveness with which she judged people had charmed him. For Emma, people were enemies or protectors. Even though the charm had worn off, he sometimes envied her–her sense of others devoid of the kind of complex and enervating reflections he was given to–for within her limits she was clear while he, he thought, moved in a permanent blur.

one hallmark of intellect is the ability to simplify, to make the complex easy to understand. Anyone can be unclear. The way to credibility is to speak and write plainly without language that bewilders or misleads.

Good description is fast, spare, specific, and showing. Weak description is slow, wordy, vague, abstract, and telling.

Special effects aside, we'll write clearer, cleaner, and more energetic sentences if we fill them with nouns, verbs, and adverbs rather than with prepositions and prepositional phrases.

Obviously, we can't cut all prepositions, nor should we try. But keeping them to a minimum offers a quick route to clarity, simplicity, and brevity.

A useful guideline is to limit to three the numbers in a sentence—three seems to be all the reader's brain can

The vague qualifiers in those examples are chaff, a habit of conversation—um, ah, ahem! They add nothing. Happy, for example, is a strong, clear word, but if it's not enough, overjoyed, thrilled, or ecstatic has a precision that "very happy" lacks.

Somehow anything unknown was its own minefield. Waiting for shelling was worse than the shelling itself. Once the attack started, you knew exactly where you stood and could respond. But the waiting. Yes, the waiting was the worst part.

Cut everything superfluous,' Pound had said. 'Go in fear of abstractions. Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.

She wouldn't have seen any of the dinginess, because no one ever does until they're on he outside of a place, looking in.

She wouldn't have seen any of the dinginess, because no one ever does until they're on the outside of a place, looking in.