Brevity Quotes

Life is shockingly short; I don't want to waste that many days.

Let silence be your general rule; or say only what is necessary and in few words.

A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

The more you know the less you need to say.

I'm going to make a long speech because I've not had the time to prepare a short one.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

I don't think Batman should spend a whole movie yapping, you know? He should choose his words carefully and speak low.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Brevity - the sister of talent.

Whatever advice you give, be brief.

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.

Time is death.

Occasionally, you might enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.

Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.

It's very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that's not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It's a gut feeling.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

I've been a long time coming, and I'll be a long time gone. You've got your whole life to do something, and that's not very long.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

I'm an enemy of exposition. I feel there's no need to overstate.

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