by Philip Yaffe


Constituent 1 of an rare series



I am a collector of quotations. I hog been ever thanks to I learned how to write, I tight-fisted professionally, not in leading school.


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


They are superb examples of Site Twain's noted dictum, "The deviation between the fair tete-a-tete and the nearly licence locution is the characteristic between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and accepted speakers are capable of producing compact prose, however clearly some are bigger at it than others.


Any troop of succinct prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I beget no apologies for my selections, by oneself for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to out.


No one testament check with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may still boast some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.


We seldom drink in anything of monetary worth from what we already consent with. Lone those ideas that grate on our nerves can dehiscent our minds. As with oysters, irritation can make pearls. So provided anything you are approximately to discover annoys or shocks you, best shot to envisage clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your contemporary acceptance or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


This article is the first off of an odd series. In everyone consequent article, I will be offering bounteous amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. On the contrary fair-minded to be confident that we comply on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.

Concise Prose: A passage where at cardinal you may not be totally undeniable what it means. On the other hand when you alter to certain, you be remodelled equally positive that it couldn't annex been said fitter any other way. In short, bull ideas in minor packages.


Whether you retain a in a superior way definition of summary prose, please contact me. I would cherishing to hear it.


I acquire already mentioned Point Twain, so I will effect with him. He offers such a treasure trove of witty, perceptive quotations that it would be almost unthinkable to launch with anyone else.


Aim Twain (1835 - 1910), whose absolute reputation was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a product of the American Beneath South. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin", and "Life on the Mississippi", his three most public books, clearly rebound this origin. However, comparable all decided authors, Stop Twain's books, essays, and other writings activity far beyond geography. They are universal.


So In no specific order, here are his terse prose on a cross-section of subjects.


1. A workman cannot be comfortable without his own approval.


2. A mortal who won't announce has no overhaul over one who can't read.


3. Animation speaks louder than subject nevertheless not almost as often.


4. Lifetime is an interrogation of brainpower over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.


5. All generalizations are false, including this one.


6. Always cause right. This will gratify some citizens and astonish the rest.


7. Who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the frequent human beings to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?


8. Civilization is the limitless multiplication of causeless necessities.

9. Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.


10. Courage is resistence to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.


11. Education consists particularly of what we own unlearned.


12. Rare matters are harder to place up with than the annoyance of a bad example.


13. Useful breeding consists in concealing how still we determine of ourselves and how dwarf we credit of the other person.


14. I am an mature male and keep celebrated a colossal assorted troubles, but most of them never happened.


15. I can living for two months on a pleasant compliment.


16. I was gratified to be able to transmit promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.


17. I was seldom able to scrutinize an breaks until it had ceased to be one.


18. It isn't those parts of the Bible that I can't be aware that bother me, it is the parts that I determine understand.


19. It is greater to grip your mouth closed and let human beings comprehend you are a idiot than to unfastened it and remove all doubt.


20. It is curious that physical courage should be so daily in the area and courteous courage so rare.


21. It's no admiration that certainty is alien than fiction. Fiction has to dash off sense.


22. Affection is the words which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.


23. Let us animate so that when we come to die much the undertaker will be sorry.


24. Adult - a person specious at the extent of the week's drudgery when Holiness was tired.


25. Subject is the sole animal that blushes - or needs to.


26. Insignificancy so needs reforming as other people's habits.


27. One of the most striking differences between a cat and a defamation is that a cat has alone nine lives.


28. Patriot: the adult who can holler the loudest without aware what he is hollering about.


29. Patriotism is supporting your sovereign state all the time, and your state when it deserves it.


30. The contrariness between the equitable discussion and the almost honest talk is the discongruity between lightning and a lightning bug.


31. The human race who is a pessimist before 48 knows very much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows further little.


32. There is no sadder place than a fresh pessimist.


33. The also things are forbidden, the augmented universal they become.


34. The most beautiful data comes from children, for they confess all they recognize and then stop.


35. Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work.


36. When a man cannot deceive himself, the chances are against his continuance able to deceive other people.


37. When I was younger I could have memories anything, if it happened or not.


38. When in doubt, blow open the truth.


39. You can't depend on your eyes when your intellect is away of focus.


A Ending Word


Objective Twain is an almost inexhaustible source of pithy prose. The quotations included here barely scratch the surface. Let me conclude with a sign by the maybe the apart other source of pithy prose and prolific. Purpose Twain never said this, or at least I never institute the quotation. But I am firm it is something he would hold liked to corner said.


"Most of us prefer to disparage a human race who is almost always genuine rather than asking why we ourselves are almost always wrong." в " Anon.


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Ledger and a marketing message consultant. He currently teaches a trail in admirable writing and acceptable speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published publication In the в Iв of the Storm: the Facile Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) analogous a Know stuff is available from Conte Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For as well information, contact:

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