"Conciseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Pharsalia," gives evidence of poetic talent. Where there was so little productive genius, it was natural that grammarians and commentators should abound. There was one great writer, the historian Tacitus (about 54-117), who towers above his contemporaries, and in vigor and conciseness has seldom been equaled. The elder Pliny (23-79), whose curiosity to witness the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 cost him his life, was a famous observer and author in natural history. His nephew, the younger Pliny, the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... epigram in its first intention may be described as a very short poem summing up as though in a memorial inscription what it is desired to make permanently memorable in any action or situation. It must have the compression and conciseness of a real inscription, and in proportion to the smallness of its bulk must be highly finished, evenly balanced, simple, and lucid. In literature it holds something of the same place as is held in art by an engraved gem. But if the definition of the epigram ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... one look at the captain's face made him suspect that the moment for knowing the truth had arrived. Avoiding his glance, Ulysses told him curtly, trying to evade by the conciseness of his language all ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... boastfulness, and other little vanities, in short, all the qualities, good and bad, that distinguish his countrymen. Heinrich Heine, not always a trustworthy witness, but in this case so unusually serious that we will take advantage of his acuteness and conciseness, characterises the Polish nobleman by the following precious mosaic of adjectives: "hospitable, proud, courageous, supple, false (this little yellow stone must not be lacking), irritable, enthusiastic, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... point of his school life, what books it were best worth while to read before the end (let me say) of his thirtieth year;' and we venture to regard Mr. Welldon's list as the best of all in point of conciseness and practical value. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of "Full of fun and fooster, like Mooney's goose," with the hope that your acute and ingenious correspondent D.V.S. may be able to throw some light upon "Mooney." Let me add that D.V.S. has perhaps somewhat misconceived my brief comment on Ludlam, which my regard for conciseness has left some deal obscure; and it does not appear worth while to go over the ground again. I repeatedly heard "Dick's hat-band" quoted by Lancashire friends exactly as given by Southey. Does not the variation "cobbler's dog" tend to prove the alliterative ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... elegantly slim leg over the other, "I've been dining with the Kennedy family," he said, with a neat and significant conciseness. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... declarations or "bills of rights".[31] All drafts of the French Declaration, from those of the cahiers to the twenty-one proposals before the National Assembly, vary more or less from the original, either in conciseness or in breadth, in cleverness or in awkwardness of expression. But so far as substantial additions are concerned they present only doctrinaire statements of a purely theoretical nature or elaborations, which belong to the realm of political metaphysics. To enter upon them here is unnecessary. ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... by his Hebrew Grammar, which has since appeared. In each of these works, in a masterly manner, he treats of every matter proper for the student to know. Each subject is displayed, in a new method, with perspicuity, conciseness, simplicity, and classic taste. His Greek Grammar, we may suppose, will exhibit the same traits, when it shall meet the public eye. This last labor he had finished, and committed to the printer a few months before ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... governor of Numidia. Excepting the injustice with which Sallust treats Cicero, he is entitled to high commendation. In both his remaining works, the Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha, there is a peculiar air of philosophical sentiment, which, joined to the elegant conciseness of style, and animated description of characters, gives to his writings a degree of interest, superior to that which is excited in any preceding work of the historical kind. In the occasional use of obsolete words, and in laboured exordiums to both his histories, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus |
