We have natural and justifiable distrust of talky men who make a sounding and ostentatious pretense of saying a thing and yet don’t say it after all – men who hide a mustard-seed of an idea in a kaleidoscope of words, so that the more you turn the thing the more you can’t quite capture that elusive little idea, because it always takes refuge, just in time, behind a new and bewitching rainbow-explosion of fine language.
They talk most who have the least to say.
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.
British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald
People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.
The way to be a bore is to say everything.
Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.
What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
If you consistently write 'The sun set' rather than 'The sun sank slowly in the bright western sky,' your story will move three times as fast. Of course, there are times you want the longer version for atmosphere - but not many. Wordiness not only kills pace; it bores readers.
People [in politics] do go on and talk.
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
Who talks much, must talk in vain.
Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.
A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
If a thing can be said in ten words, I may be relied upon to take a hundred to say it. I ought to apologize for that. I ought to prune, pare and extirpate excess growth, but I will not. I like words—strike that, I love words—and while I am fond of the condensed and economical use of them in poetry, in song lyrics, in Twitter, in good journalism and smart advertising, I love the luxuriant profusion and mad scatter of them too.
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
I'm unfortunately very verbose too often.
As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say nothing.
Writers talk too much.
Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.
A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk, will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.
And 'tis remarkable that they talk most who have the least to say.
The plainest case in many words entangling.
