Quotes About Clarity

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

Hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea-leaves blocking a sink.

La libertad es poder decir libremente que dos y dos son cuatro. Si se concede esto, todo lo demás vendrá por sus pasos contados.

Good prose is like a windowpane.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.

He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly.

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness.

Los mejores libros son los que nos dicen lo que ya sabemos

By lack of understanding they remained sane.

The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense, it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them.

Cómo vas a tener un eslogan como el de la libertad es la esclavitud cuando el concepto de libertad no exista? Todo el clima del pensamiento será distinto. En realidad, no habrá pensamiento en el sentido en que ahora lo entendemos. La ortodoxia significa no pensar, no necesitar el pensamiento. Nuestra ortodoxia es la inconsciencia.

Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four.

The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

it was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say.

Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But the curious thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind, to the

When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the detail of incidents without being able to recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which you could assign nothing.

He had still, he reflected, not learned the ultimate secret. He understood how; he did not understand why.

Temel gerçekler görüÅŸ alanlar? d???ndayd?. Kar?ncalar gibiydiler; ancak küçük olaylar? görebiliyorlard?, büyüklerini görmekten yoksundular.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.