Essays, On Authorship and Style
Context: The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime.
True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself; that is, it consists in his correctly distinguishing between what is necessary and what is superfluous. On the other hand, one should never sacrifice clearness, to say nothing of grammar, for the sake of being brief. To impoverish the expression of a thought, or to obscure or spoil the meaning of a period for the sake of using fewer words shows a lamentable want of judgment.
“The little things are what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.”
Las pequeñeces son lo eterno, y lo demás. todo lo demás, lo breve, lo muy breve
Voces (1943)
Original
Las pequeñeces son lo eterno, y lo demás, todo lo demás, lo breve, lo muy breve.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Antonio Porchia 276
Italian Argentinian poet 1885–1968Related quotes
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity — but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage. We must compress into a single second what was held before in a sixty-second minute.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Part III Poems, "On St. David's Day. To Mrs. E. C. Morrieson." (March 1, 1854)
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
“Since the only things we remember are humiliations and defeats, what is the use of all the rest?”
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
“I did all the problems a little different from the rest of the class.”
in an interview http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4640_1.html by Thomas Samuel Kuhn on December 5, 1963, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1827/mar/13/criminal-laws-consolidation-bills#column_1156 in the House of Commons (13 March 1827) on the consolidation of the criminal law
Home Secretary
"The Queen's Domain", The Queen's Domain, and other Poems (1858).