“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)
Letter to John Adams (1774)
Source: The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories
“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)
Letter to John Adams (1774)
“5037. Three are too many to keep a Secret, and too few to be merry.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Irvine Welsh book The Acid House
A Smart Cunt: A Novella, "Associates as Opiates" (Chapter 3).
The Acid House (1994)
Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer
72
Essays in Idleness (1967 Columbia University Press, Trns: Donald Keene)
“How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive.”
Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman
“Unuttered Words,” p. 59
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor
"Here, early to bed, lies kind William Maginn" (1842), line 19; cited from R. Shelton Mackenzie (ed.) The Fraserian Papers of the Late William Maginn (New York: Redfield, 1857) p. cviii.
“Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.”
Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher
Letter to Mrs. Blumberg (27 September 1977)
Richard Koch (1950) German medical historian and internist
Source: The 80/20 principle: the secret of achieving more with less (1999), p. 142