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.

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

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

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.

Whate'er is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease.

Definite speech means clarity of mind.

I never want to confuse people or go over their heads.

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

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do: and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

Make your point as clear as possible and thrust the steel well home.

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

Clarity of communication is important.

The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.

There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.

Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

If we are understood, more words are unnecessary; if we are not likely to be understood, they are useless.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

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

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.