80 Brevity Quotes And Sayings In Life, Writing & Time

Life

Looking for inspirational quotes about brevity? We’ve have got the best collection of brevity quotes, sayings, messages, captions for Instagram, (with images and pictures) to inspire you to be short and brief in your communication, writing, and life.

Brevity Meaning: The word means to be concise and exact use of words in writing, speech, or communication.

Brevity is the art of saying much in few words, being concise yet precise. The inspirational quotes from famous authors, writers, politicians, leaders and more put light to the beauty of brevity in various aspects of life.

Don’t forget to read our quotes on perfectly imperfect for people who love to be themselves.

Brevity Quotes

“Brevity is pleasing.”
“Brevity is beautiful.”

“Brevity is the soul of command.” ― Xenophon
“Love is the brevity of life.” ― Lailah Gifty Akita
“Screenwriting is made of brevity.” ― A.D. Posey

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.” ― Dorothy Parker
“Brevity is the soul of the wit.” ― William Shakespeare (From Hamlet)
Brevity Quotes Shakespeare
“Brevity in writing is very powerful.” ― Lance Greenfield

“Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.” ― Edsger Dijkstra
“Brevity is the sister of talent.” ― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
“I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.” ― Baltasar Gracian

“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Famous Quotes On Brevity
“You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.” ― Saki
“There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.” ― Horace

“To write good poems is the secret of brevity.” ― Dejan Stojanovic
“Brevity acts as the sword for sharp minds and, spike for dull ones.”
“It’s not my accent, but my brevity makes me stylish.” ― Amit Kalantri

“Brevity: To say at once whatever is to be said.” ― Georg C. Lichtenberg
Brevity Of Life Quotes
“Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.” ― Hosea Ballou
“The greatest surprise of life to me is the brevity of life.” ― Billy Graham
Quotes About Brevity Of Life

“If you can say it in a paragraph, don’t write a book.” ― Frank Sonnenberg
“Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.” ― Rudolf Virchow
“If you can’t explain something in a few words, try fewer.” ― Robert Brault

“Clarity of thought is a must for brevity in speech.” ― Somali K. Chakrabarti
“There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.”
Brevity Sayings
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” ― Mark Twain
Brevity Quotes by Mark Twain

“In the pleading of cases nothing pleases so much as brevity.” ― Pliny The Younger
“No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity.” ― Katherine Cecil Thurston
Brevity Quotes
“If brevity is the soul of wit, the brevity and levity are the whole of it.” ― Michael R. Burch

“Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone’s saying, ‘I love you.’” ― Judith Viorst
“If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.” ― Dennis Roth
“Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.” ― William Zinsser

“The definition of Brevity: That which people believe would be a virtue – in me!” ― Greg Curtis
“Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?” ― Stephen King
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The brevity of life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Brevity
“Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.” ― Antonio Porchia
“Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.” ― Psalm 90:12 (Bible Verse)

“What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.” ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“If human lives be, for their very brevity, sweet, then beast lives are sweeter still.” ― Isobelle Carmody
“Brevity is best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.” ― Thomas Ken
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ― Thomas Jefferson
“Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.” ― Michael Winter

“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain about brevity.” ― Jean de La Bruyere
“For the sake of brevity, we will always represent this number 2. 718281828459… By the letter e.” ― Leonhard Euler
“Because of the brevity of life, the Bible warns that we should be prepared to meet God at all times.” ― Billy Graham

“Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.” ― Protagoras
“This is going to take a while. I’m a fantasy author. We have trouble with the concept of brevity.” ― Brandon Sanderson
“I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.” ― Mohsin Hamid

“It is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.” ― Winifred Holtby
“This is a brief line, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.” ― Rudyard Kipling
“When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.” ― William Strunk Jr.

“It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.” ― Maureen Johnson
“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.” ― William Shakespeare
“The reason why he wrote while standing up: Nothing conduces to brevity like a caving in of the knees.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“If we fully comprehend the brevity of life, our greatest desire would be to please God and to serve one another.” ― Dr. James Dobson
“I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.” ― Annie Proulx
“A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they a little more work.” ― Don Marquis

“Brevity of the Neophyte signifies something big is in Embryonic stage and that is why perplexed people often become Bellicose.” ― Pratibha Singh
“But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.” ― George Eliot
“On the geologic time scale, a human lifetime is reduced to a brevity that is too inhibiting to think about. The mind blocks the information.” ― John McPhee

“Brevity in writing is what charity is to all other virtues – righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other.” ― Sydney Smith
“Our hearts, they need mirror. We see our better selves in the eyes of those who loves us. And there is a beauty that brevity alone provides.” ― Cassandra Clare
“Everyone on Twitter – everyone on the Internet – seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn’t allow for nuance, and it’s a nice complement to confidence.” ― Rumaan Alam

“For effective communication, use brevity. Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’ Now that’s belief! He could be brief because of all that he was that he didn’t have to say.” ― Jim Rohn
“He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?” ― Marcus Valerius Martial
“Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they’re also a total joy.” ― Ali Smith

“Let my life as poet begin. I want the life of the poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.” ― Maxine Hong Kingston
“Girls, well, when God was coding their speech pattern, he deliberately left out the brevity parameter. He probably had a good laugh, and did the needful to the other kind to maintain the balance.” ― Rajat Mishra
“After spending a last few years working on a serious novel set in Chechnya, I was drawn to both brevity and casualmess of Twitter, and wrote a series of tweets titled ‘The Erotic Inner Life of Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey.’”

“What can the redwoods tell us about ourselves, well I think they can tell us something about human time. The flickering transitory quality of human time and the brevity of human life – the necessity to love.” ― Richard Preston
“Personally I am more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to ‘lay it on’ in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.” ― Noah Lukeman
“Great art must proceed to precision and brevity It presupposes the alert mind of an educated listener who, in a single act of thinking, includes with every concept all associations pertaining to the complex.” ― Arnold Schoenberg

“One false word, one extra word, and somebody’s thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you’re going to be long winded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.” ― Patricia Marx
“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
“How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements – how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!” ― Seneca

“The brevity of human life should make us realize how important is now. What was then is not now, what is now will not be later. Why do we choose to ignore this often and build a construct for ourselves in the form of love, happiness, solitude, pain and even death.” ― Vivek
“The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit: put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good.” ― Iris Murdoch
“I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silent and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.” ― Rutherford B. Hayes