Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux Quotes

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well.

A genius knows how to make himself easily understood without being obvious about it.

They place great stress on the clarity of our language for expressing nuances and showing subtleties.

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all.

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.

The most important thing is to have something important to say and finding the means to say it.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me understand something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting.

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.