#brevity

The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it. ↗

— Michel Houellebecq

#death #story #dating

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#brevity #dwarfish #epigram #soul #whole

With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. ↗

— Walter Pater

#awful #brevity #desperate #effort #experience

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. ↗

— George Burns

#humor #religion #humor

My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#brevity #humor #art

Had we but world enough and time.... ↗

— Andrew Marvell

#life

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story. ↗

— Annie Proulx

#brevity #find #i #intellectually #intensity

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction. ↗

— Hosea Ballou

#correction #parents

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator. ↗