“There are some simple maxims […] which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.”

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)

Source: La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960), Ch. 5, sect. 4

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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As quoted in Physics by Aristotle, as translated by John Burnet http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/burnet/egp.htm?pleaseget=14 <br class="br">Context: There cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification. For there are some who make this (i. e. a body distinct from the elements) the infinite, and not air or water, in order that the other things may not be destroyed by their infinity. They are in opposition one to another — air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.

Source: Along for the Ride

Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Act II
The Seagull (1896)