William Allingham Quotes

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.

I love the right words. I think economy and precision of language are important.

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

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

Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.

Why do we embroider everything we say with special emphasis when all we really need to do is simply say what needs to he said? Of course the fact is that there is very little that needs to be said.

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

I strive to be brief but I become obscure.

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

Much speech is one thing, well-timed speech is another.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.

I was born into a profession in which my love of words, chosen with care for their meaning and nuance, was extremely important, not only to me, but also to the people with whom I worked with.

Writing is a communication.

Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

I love words, and I love that there's so many words available to make a point and to create a picture.

When the public doesn't understand me, it's a battle. So when I choose words, I choose them for their musicality, rhythm, and sense, and I choose the right dialect to express that.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.