Time To Make It Short

(moved from CreativeStupidity)

Thus BlaisePascal's comment (I paraphrase): "I apologize that this letter is so long - I lacked the time to make it short."

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(moved from DoTheEasiestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork)

"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." -- BlaisePascal

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(moved from DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork)

This pattern is reminiscent of the famous BlaisePascal quote. The story goes that in a letter he wrote the postscript: "I would have written a shorter letter but didn't have time."

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(moved from VerbalDiarrhea)

"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I've written a long one instead." - attributed to BlaisePascal, MarkTwain, and MrVoltaire, and probably others too.

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(moved from ShortAndToThePoint)

"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." -- BlaisePascal

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(moved from ShortBooks) (where it was previously moved from WabiSabi)

There's a quote by MrVoltaire; unfortunately I don't recall the exact quote, but it ran along the lines of "Madame, here is the book you commissioned, in two volumes. I'm sorry but I did not have enough time to write it in one volume." -- StevenJOwens

Actually, it was Blaise Pascal who wrote "I have written you a long letter because I did not have time to write a short one." -- WillSargent

Because short writing must necessarily be Wabi-Sabi -- AlistairCockburn

Isn't it that WabiSabi writing must necessarily be short?

One of my philosophy professors once advised me, "Write what you have to say, and then stop," when I asked him how long he wanted a certain term paper to be. -- BillCaputo

I believe it was Samuel Clemens who apologized for writing a long letter to a friend, he didn't have time to write a short one. -- JohnWheeler

I believe it was Blaise Pascal. A search on http://www.google.com/ found this evidence: http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v05/0444.html -- ChristianLindig?

"Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he k alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?" -- Martin Luther King Junior, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" http://www.almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html

"When in doubt, cite MarkTwain" (from http://powerreporting.com/5answer.html) (SamuelClemens is MarkTwain).

Pascal is definitely the usual attribution, however similar quotes come from Thoreau and St. Augustine, and there's apparently evidence that Cicero was possibly the earliest. http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2003/07/msg00105.html

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In a similar vein, I find this quote useful.

"Vigorous writing is concise" (William Strunk Jr., "The Elements of Style", 1919)

It served me well as a writer before I started programming for a living.

I don't want to get carried away by the analogy between coding and writing, but it serves you well as a programmer, too, no? Omit needless code!

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(moved from SimpleIsntEasy)

'I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.' BlaisePascal - "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657

In other words, he had enough time to code, but not to refactor :) -- GavinLambert

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"Brevity is the soul of wit" -- Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 (William Shakespeare)

["Brevity is ... wit." -- Reader's Digest]

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See ShortCut

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"An essay should be like a miniskirt: long enough to cover the subject, short enough to be interesting." -- Wilma Roby

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We apologize this Wiki is so long, because we are all too busy to make it shorter. --PhlIp