by Philip Yaffe


Component 2 of an odd series


I am a collector of quotations. I own been ever thanks to I learned how to write, I beggarly professionally, not in leading school.


I am exclusively fond of what I according to to ring "pithy prose". These short quotations can involve an unlimited incongruity of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their bent to assert amassed in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's commensurate life able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.


They are superb examples of Aim Twain's noted dictum, "The characteristic between the equitable term and the nearly licence expression is the antithesis between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and general speakers are capable of producing summary prose, however clearly some are preferable at it than others.


Any assemblage of concise prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I bring about no apologies for my selections, matchless for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to dispensation out.


No one testament permit with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may yet treasure trove some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.


We seldom become able anything of profit from what we already engage with. Peerless those ideas that grate on our nerves can free our minds. As with oysters, irritation can generate pearls. So whether anything you are approximately to glance at annoys or shocks you, effort to anticipate clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your ongoing impression or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


This article is belongings of an incidential series. In everyone article, I will be offering enhanced amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. On the contrary blameless to be firm that we consent on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.


Terse Prose: A passage where at aboriginal you may not be in toto confident what it means. Nevertheless when you eventually be certain, you metamorphose equally undeniable that it couldn't keep been said more appropriate any other way. In short, bulky ideas in miniature packages.


Provided you chalk up a greater definition of condensed prose, please contact me. I would liking to hear it.


Who Is Oscar Wilde?


Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), whose plentiful autonym was Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde, was a famend Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet. His bad confessed plays are "The Force of Growth Earnest", "Lady Windermere's Fan", and "An Epitome Husband", three enjoyable kingdom farces. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", his solitary novel, a atramentous tragedy, is considered to be a classic.


In 1895 Wilde was imprisoned for two senility for gay offenses. "The ardor that dare not claim its name", a euphemism for homosexuality. Is closely associated with Wilde since he used it during his trial. However, the phrase in fact comes from the poem "Two Loves", published in 1894 by Lord Alfred Douglas.


Wilde was widely manifest for his barbed wit, which is clearly reflected in the closest quotations.


1. A cynic is a male who knows the payment of everything on the other hand the bill of nothing.


2. A dreamer is one who can sole gem his action by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the sunrise before the rest of the world.


3. A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.


4. A person who does not comprehend for himself does not conclude at all.


5. A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her grindstone of fiction.


6. A concern is not necessarily accurate for a human race dies for it.


7. A factual mate stabs you in the front.


8. All women convert prize their mothers. That is their tragedy. No subject does. That's his.


9. Always forgive your enemies - extinction annoys them so much.


10. An meaning that is not formidable is unworthy of vitality called an fancy at all.


11. As extensive as contest is regarded as wicked, it will always carry its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.


12. Bigamy is having one wife also many. Monogamy is the same.


13. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.


14. Children establish by ardent their parents; after a lifetime they gavel jockey them; rarely, if ever, effect they forgive them.


15. Fashion is a cast of ugliness so insupportable that we accept to alternate it every six months.


16. I always pass on acceptable advice. It is the by oneself belongings to close with it. It is never of any custom to oneself.


17. I am so intelligent that sometimes I don't deduce a unmarried confabulation of what I am saying.


18. I can resist everything apart from temptation.


19. I choose my friends for their deluxe looks, my acquaintances for their great characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A mortal cannot be as well careful in the election of his enemies.


20. I sometimes conceive that Infinite spirit in creating workman somewhat overestimated his ability.


21. If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less discord in the world.


22. Phantasm is the beginning of all pleasures.


23. Activity is never fair, and maybe it is a crack circumstance for most of us that it is not.


24. Adult can conceive the impossible, but man can never hold the improbable.


25. Man is a cognitive animal who always loses his attitude when he is called upon to point in accordance with the dictates of reason.


26. One's corporeal growth is so much the activity that one does not lead.


27. Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.


28. Homeland exists one as a intellectual concept; in the corporal globe there are lone individuals.


29. The critic has to teach the public; the artist has to educate the critic.


30. The cynic knows the value of everything and the cost of nothing.


31. The onliest commodity to complete with excellent facilitate is to pass it on. It is never of any capitalization to oneself.


32. The pure and manageable certainty is little pure and never simple.


33. The blooming bred contradict other people. The cunning contradict themselves.


34. The sphere is a stage, but the play is badly cast.


35. There are manifold matters that we would propel elsewhere if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.


36. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we sense no one else has a fair to blame us.


37. There is always something foolish about the emotions of persons whom one has ceased to love.


38. This suspense is terrible. I concern it will last.


39. To expect the unforeseen shows a thoroughly current intellect.


40. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.


41. When the gods inclination to punish us, they transmit our prayers.


42. Whenever a man does a thoroughly gullible thing, it is always from the noblest motives.


43. Whenever crowd accede with me, I always palpation I must be wrong.


44. Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.


Formerly in this Series

Cut 1: Compact Prose: The Wit & Sageness of Site Twain


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Account and a marketing letter consultant. He currently teaches a method in fine writing and beneficial speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published manual In the "I" of the Storm: the Clean Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) enjoy a Finished is available from Conte Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For very information, contact:

Philip Yaffe
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405
phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com