Quotes about Conciseness
First be sure that you know exactly what you want to say. Then be sure you have said exactly that.
— CS Lewis
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
— Samuel Johnson
Less is only more where more is no good.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ Letter to Harrison Blake ; November 16, 1857]
— Henry David Thoreau
Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to shorten it.
— Henry David Thoreau
Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.
— Cicero
Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
— George Eliot
Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
— Mark Twain
The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say, "in other words...."
— Robert Brault
The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.
— Albert Einstein
Make things as simple as possible but no simpler
— Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
— Albert Einstein