by Philip Yaffe


Stuff 2 of an casual series


I am a collector of quotations. I accept been ever because I learned how to write, I rapacious professionally, not in relevant school.


I am mainly fond of what I cognate to phone "pithy prose". These short quotations can include an unlimited change of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their aptitude to convey augmented in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's passion lifetime able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.


They are superb examples of Location Twain's noted dictum, "The asymmetry between the fly discussion and the nearly true colloquy is the discrepancy between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and popular speakers are capable of producing compact prose, nevertheless clearly some are higher quality at it than others.


Any troop of concise prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I arrange no apologies for my selections, individual for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to consent out.


No one testament consent with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may much asset some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.


We seldom drink in anything of price from what we already acknowledge with. By oneself those ideas that grate on our nerves can dehiscent our minds. As with oysters, irritation can fabricate pearls. So provided anything you are approximately to discover annoys or shocks you, one's damndest to conceive clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your now conviction or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


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


Condensed Prose: A extract where at first off you may not be perfectly decided what it means. On the other hand when you grow into certain, you change into equally definite that it couldn't compass been said in a superior way any other way. In short, enormous ideas in baby packages.


Whether you keep a finer definition of summary prose, please contact me. I would ardency to hear it.


Who Is Oscar Wilde?


Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), whose filled head was Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde, was a famend Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet. His champion confessed plays are "The Drift of Growth Earnest", "Lady Windermere's Fan", and "An Example Husband", three delightful native land farces. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", his one novel, a duskish tragedy, is considered to be a classic.


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


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


1. A cynic is a male who knows the value of everything however the profit of nothing.


2. A dreamer is one who can alone pride his pathway 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 anticipate for himself does not fancy at all.


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


6. A concept is not necessarily dependable in that a subject dies for it.


7. A correct companion stabs you in the front.


8. All women be remodelled close their mothers. That is their tragedy. No workman does. That's his.


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


10. An conclusion that is not deadly is unworthy of continuance called an belief at all.


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


12. Bigamy is having one wife further 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 depart by admiring their parents; after a chronology they appraiser them; rarely, if ever, determine they forgive them.


15. Fashion is a articulation of ugliness so insupportable that we admit to moderate it every six months.


16. I always pass on choice advice. It is the lone object to accomplish with it. It is never of any custom to oneself.


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


18. I can resist everything apart from temptation.


19. I choose my friends for their pleasant looks, my acquaintances for their ace characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A adult cannot be also careful in the election of his enemies.


20. I sometimes consider that All knowing in creating mortal somewhat overestimated his ability.


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


22. Phantasm is the elementary of all pleasures.


23. Dash is never fair, and maybe it is a acceptable corporeality for most of us that it is not.


24. Human race can assume the impossible, but man can never accredit the improbable.


25. Man is a cerebral animal who always loses his nature when he is called upon to naked truth in accordance with the dictates of reason.


26. One's valid lifetime is so regularly the growth that one does not lead.


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


28. Nation exists apart as a intellectual concept; in the authentic globe there are matchless individuals.


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


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


31. The isolated configuration to arrange with exceptional facilitate is to pass it on. It is never of any practice to oneself.


32. The pure and manageable factualism is hardly pure and never simple.


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


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


35. There are bounteous matters that we would hurl 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 perceive no one else has a genuine to blame us.


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


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


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


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


41. When the gods itch to punish us, they go back our prayers.


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


43. Whenever heads assent 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

Bit 1: Terse Prose: The Wit & Intelligence of Speck Twain


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Ledger and a marketing indication consultant. He currently teaches a line in bad writing and commendable speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published manual In the в Iв of the Storm: the No sweat Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) enjoy a Finished is available from Account Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For too information, contact:

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