Brevity Quotes
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The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn’t the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow’s deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn’t violet’s rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green.
William H. Gass
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Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Tom Stoppard
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[S]ince brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
William Shakespeare
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The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life.
Vita Sackville-West
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This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.
Rudyard Kipling
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Brevity is the soul of wit.
William Shakespeare
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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
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My biggest poetic influences are probably 20th-century British and Irish poets. So I suppose I'm always listening for the music I associate with that poetry, the telling images, the brevity. I want to hear it in my own work as well as in the poetry I read. However, I think I'm generally more forgiving of other poets than myself.
David Starkey
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It is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.
Winifred Holtby
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You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.
Hector Hugh Munro
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Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.
Thomas Ken
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A good short story is a work of art which daunts us in proportion to its brevity.... No inspiration is too noble for it; no amountof hard work is too severe for it.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
