Louis McHenry Howe Quotes

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me understand something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

Well Mr. President, it isn’t quite as simple as that.

It would be Goddamned easy to run this office if you didn’t have to deal with people.

To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts.

Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.

My tongue is prone to lose the way,Not so my pen, for in a letterWe have not better things to say,But surely put them better.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.

Everything takes longer and costs more.

Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

I see but one rule: to be clear.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing-to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics-Well, they can do whatever they wish.

To write simply is as difficult as to be good.

There is something magical about putting a problem in writing. It is almost as though by writing about what is wrong, you start to discover new ways of making it right.

I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.

Uncommon things must be said in common words, if you would have them to be received in less than a century.

If writing has taught me anything, it's that you don't actually understand anything until you can express it in words.