Conciseness is something I struggle with. I know the value of being brief, I admire people who can do it, and yet I consistently use three paragraphs where one would do.
Here are some quotes from people who were better at it than me:
“I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” – Blaise Pascal
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Brevity is the soul of wit.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Omit needless words.” – Strunk & White, The Elements of Style
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
“Good prose is like a windowpane.” – George Orwell
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.” – Henry David Thoreau
The irony of collecting this many quotes about brevity is not lost on me.