by Philip Yaffe


Branch 4 of an casual series


I am a collector of quotations. I gain been ever because I learned how to write, I parsimonious professionally, not in important school.


I am exceptionally fond of what I approximative to bell "pithy prose". These short quotations can embrace an unlimited incongruity of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their adeptness to affirm extra in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's close lifetime able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.


They are superb examples of Point Twain's noted dictum, "The contrariety between the fair expression and the nearly deserved consultation is the discongruity between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and usual speakers are capable of producing concise prose, on the contrary clearly some are more fitting at it than others.


Any party of summary prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I constitute no apologies for my selections, matchless for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to allowance out.


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


We seldom drink in anything of amount from what we already give blessing with. Lone those ideas that grate on our nerves can bare our minds. As with oysters, irritation can build pearls. So provided anything you are approximately to interpret annoys or shocks you, pop to expect clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your in fashion confidence or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


This article is any of an odd series. In everyone article, I will be offering expanded amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. However good to be sure that we check on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.


Compact Prose: A allusion where at head you may not be absolutely firm what it means. On the other hand when you be reformed certain, you shift equally undeniable that it couldn't chalk up been said choice any other way. In short, awash ideas in petty packages.


Whether you hog a more advantageous definition of terse prose, please contact me. I would delight to hear it.


Who Is Anatole France?


Anatole France (1844 - 1924), whose absolute designation was Jacques Anatole Thibault, was a prolific French novelists and essayist. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Affection in Literature for his collected works.


1. A workman is never joyful apart from at the reward of some ignorance.


2. All changes, all the more the most longed for, compass their melancholy; for what we liberty last us is a thing of ourselves; we must die to one get-up-and-go before we can enter another.


3. An education isn't how all the more you accept dedicated to memory, or yet how yet you know. It's duration able to differentiate between what you cognize and what you don't.


4. An education which does not domesticate the will is an education that depraves the mind.


5. Chance is maybe the pseudonym of Holy spirit when he does not want to indication his work.


6. Religious believers are safeguarded in a high-reaching measure against the risk of decided neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the general neurosis spares them the charge of constructing a personal one.


7. Duration would be insupportable if we were never to dream.


8. Novel books that incorporate no lies are intensely dull.


9. I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.


10. If a million individuals asseverate a unreasonable thing, it is much a foolish thing.


11. Ignorance and mistake are exigent to life, adoration bread and water.


12. In craft as in love, flair is enough.


13. It is higher quality to find out petty than to misunderstand a lot.


14. It is human heart to envision wisely and deed in an absurd fashion.


15 It is right for the emotions to be guileless and the cognizance not to be.


16. Nine tenths of education is encouragement.


17. No authority ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.


18. Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.


19. Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him gone to be a logical animal.


20. Religion has done crush a good supply by production it a sin.


21. That adult is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.


22. The criterion human race does not be read what to conclude with this life, even wants another one which will behind forever.


23. The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.


24. The greatest fineness of male is possibly curiosity.


25. The law, in its awesome equality, forbids the affluent as able-bodied as the pathetic to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.


26. The integral art of teaching is particular the art of awakening the common curiosity of crude minds for the direction of satisfying it afterwards.


27. There are bare equitable general public who complete not consider that they posses had a bargain unless they hold cheated a merchant.


28. To scheme is everything, to comprehend is no thing at all.


29. Until one has loved an animal a object of one's soul remains unawakened.


30. War conflict will disappear by oneself when men shall grip no factor whatever in assault and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the one contrivance to axe war.


31. We reproach body politic for talking about themselves; nevertheless it is the person they treat best.


32. What can be enhanced foolish than to credit that all this exceptional structure of heaven and field could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to cause an oyster!


33. What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.


34. Without lies people would perish of dejection and boredom.


35. You apprentice to asseverate by speaking, to announce by studying, to drop by running, to duty by working; in blameless the corresponding way, you grasp to adoration by loving.


Formerly in this Series


Bite 1: Succinct Prose: The Wit & Cleverness of Site Twain
Chunk 2: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Intelligence of Oscar Wilde

Articulation 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sageness of Citizens Named "W"


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Notebook and a marketing indication consultant. He currently teaches a order in choice writing and exceptional speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published publication In the в Iв of the Storm: the No problem Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) adore a Crackerjack is available from Book Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For also information, contact:

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