Charles II Quotes

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about.

What isn’t clear, isn’t French.

It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.

You try to make every word count, so there's no doubt what you're talking about. When you're young, you waffle away. Well, I'm done with that. I think it's much more interesting to say just what you mean.

For effective communication, use brevity. Jesus said, 'Follow me.' Now that's brief! He could be brief because of all that he was that he didn't have to say.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

The most important thing is to have something important to say and finding the means to say it.

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

I still remember the first acronym I learned, BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front. I still try to communicate that way. No reason to dance around getting to the point.

Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

Why do we embroider everything we say with special emphasis when all we really need to do is simply say what needs to he said? Of course the fact is that there is very little that needs to be said.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.