Wordgrove Post & Review

THIS EDITION: brief :: brevity

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Quoted In The Grove:
Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life
~Protagoras

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.
~Paul Ricoeur

The little things are what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity.
~Antonio Porchia

EndQuote:
With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.
~Walter Pater

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Next Exercise Prompt: vision

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Brevity is wise in discussions; wordiness leads to invention.
~Yoruba Proverb

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
~Jean Rostand

Be brief, for no discourse can please when too long.
~Miguel de Cervantes

Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.
~Theophile Gautier

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Be sincere…be brief..be seated.
~Franklin D Roosevelt

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Most cocktails containing liquor are made today with gin and ingenuity. In brief, take an ample supply of the former and use your imagination.
~Irma S Rombauer

Cocktail parties for me can be nerve-racking. The brevity of conversations, the number of them ‒ it’s not my sweet spot.
~MacKenzie Scott

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Memorable occasions should be brief, and so should be the expressions of appreciation.
~Simon Kuznets

Never thank anybody for anything, except a drink of water in the desert ‒ and then make it brief.
~Gene Fowler

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Ignoring negative things that need to be changed is destructive and does nothing to alleviate negativity. Instead, we should focus on the way we’re treating other people in our brief interactions with them.
~Tom Rath

Every interaction with another person involves a dance of expectation, even when you’re just passing someone in the street. Inside those moments ‒ however brief they may be ‒ there is a kind of anticipatory silence.
~David Means

Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone’s day.
~Douglas Conant

No matter how brief an encounter you have with anybody, you both change.
~Carolyn Kizer

It’s amazing how a simple brief phone call can pick up the spirits of the most dejected hamster, the most stressed goldfish and the most neurotic cat.
~Noel Edmonds

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Posted From The Grove

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
~P J O’Rourke (political burr)

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I came up professionally as a lawyer, and when you’re a lawyer, writing a 50-page brief in one night is just another day at the office. You learn to make choices really quickly, and you learn how to get thoughts down very quickly.
~Marc Guggenheim

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
~Mario Puzo

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.
~Benjamin Franklin

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I own that it is a good deal of a mystery to me how judges, of all persons in the world, should put their faith in dicta. A brief experience on the bench was enough to reveal to me all sorts of cracks and crevices and loopholes in my own opinions when picked up a few months after delivery and reread with due contrition.
~Benjamin N Cardozo

Reading a brief filled with ad hominem attacks is like listening to my kids fight, except that I have to wait until we’re in the courtroom to tell the attacking lawyer what I think about it.
~Raymond Kethledge

Grant us a brief delay; impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.
~Caecilius Statius

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In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.
~John Buchanan Robinson

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For Gore 2000, I was a formal campaign adviser: contrary to RNC mythology, my brief was not ‘wardrobe,’ but rather policy on women’s issues, and messaging. I was also married to a Clinton speechwriter, and observed the message decision-making process from the perspective of a spouse.
~Naomi Wolf

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I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.
~Colin Firth (thespian)

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When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You’re part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
~Studs Terkel

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America’s grossly unfair tax system won’t lead to class war. Or, if it does, the war will be brief.
~P J O’Rourke

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We modern Marxists regard socialism as a historically brief transitional stage between feudalism and capitalism, necessary only in backward countries.
~John McCarthy

There was a brief moment, after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, when even Bill Clinton recognized what had been done to Haiti in the name of ‘free trade’: the destruction of local markets and rice production.
~Greg Grandin

In brief, Western democracy, as other political models, is not exportable to all regions of the world.
~Omar Bongo

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To read the report of a discussion in which arguments for and against are presented, in which a subject has been covered from different points of view, with new ideas advanced ‒ this is far more instructive than to read a brief account of the resolution passed on the matter.
~Fredrik Bajer

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Portraits of other great ones look down on you in your college halls; but while you are young and sit at the brief feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance?
~Arthur Quiller-Couch

In my brief sojourn in college, my favorite classes were political science because I loved the idea of systems we can set up that benefit society ‒ rules we can put in place that sometimes you run against, sometimes they’re painful, but ultimately they benefit the world.
~Matt Mullenweg

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It’s hard to brief in the Oval. You know, you can’t ‒ no visual aids, hard to roll out something in front of somebody.
~Michael Hayden

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The quicker we get rid of the lobby system the better for all of us. I don’t think in this day and age it is tenable to have these nods and winks, and on-the-record and off-the-record briefings.
~Charles Kennedy

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To be sure, political unions between European countries have often failed in the past, but usually only after relatively brief periods. Denmark and Iceland separated after 130 years; the unions between Spain and Portugal and between Sweden and Norway each lasted less than a century.
~Linda Colley

When you’re told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn’t going to leak.
~Oliver North

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The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. I don’t know how well this is working out. Today after the first one Bush said, ‘I’ve got one question: What color is the red phone?’
~Bill Maher

George W. Bush attended the intelligence briefing every day. Obama has not even attended half of them. He sends surrogates. That to me is significant.
~Rush Limbaugh

My definition of an executive’s job is brief and to the point. It is simply this: Getting things done through other people.
~James Cash Penney

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No, I can tell you one of the first things that happens to a home secretary when they arrive in the job is that they are given a briefing about the security matters that they will be dealing with and I deal with security matters on a daily basis.
~Theresa May

There is a curious relationship between a candidate and the reporters who cover him. It can be affected by small things like a competent press staff, enough seats, sandwiches and briefings and the ability to understand deadlines.
~Ronald Steel

It’s not like I just have to go to Washington and go to the White House everyday, and go to the same press conference at 10 in the morning and then be briefed at 4 in the afternoon, and then get a story on at 6.
~Tabitha Soren

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement.
~Horace

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When I saw the letter of acceptance for Snap – the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, popularly known as food stamps ‒ it was a moment of gratitude, and brief catharsis and relief. Still, I knew it wasn’t a socially acceptable means to feed my family with. I saw the memes friends posted, chastising people on welfare.
~Stephanie Land

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I often say that the best way to find a story is a one-inch brief in a local newspaper.
~David Grann

I had a brief stint as ‘People’s Journalist‘ for the West Sussex Gazette; I’d do golden-wedding anniversaries and pet deaths. I was always looking for an angle; it wasn’t great.
~Alex Horne

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A good headline is far more than a summary. It has to characterize, in a few brief words, the most important themes and news items of the article it accompanies.
~Parker Conrad

Working on newspapers, you’re writing to a certain length, often very brief pieces; you tend to look for easy forms of humor ‒ women can’t drive, things like that. That’s about the level of a lot of newspaper humor. It becomes a form of laziness.
~Tom Wolfe

I am a marathon worker and marathon mother. I’ll spend three or four days completely swallowed up by work. And if I make it home in time to say good night, I may have one good hour with the girls, maybe a brief family dinner or a family walk with the dog, and then it is back on the computer to prepare for tomorrow’s shows.
~Mika Brzezinski (news commentator)

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When I sit down with my team before an engagement, sometimes they are horrified as I say I don’t want to read the biographical brief because I prefer to prise information out of people It becomes like a game. The stories that come out, I could write a book about.
~Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall

Here we have been sitting down for a brief moment and you are already asking me if there are pictures of me in my drawers.
~Anthony Weiner

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Think about it for a brief moment. Suspend disbelief. Wind the clock forward 100 years. Do you think, as a species, we will still be struggling with the things that vex us today? Will we still be arguing about the same stuff? We will still be eating Cocoa Puffs? We are at the end of the beginning.
~Brad Feld

The 21st century has more potential than perhaps any other in our brief evolutionary history. We stand on the cusp of computing, genetic and energy generation breakthroughs that were only recently in the realm of science-fiction. A golden age of humanity is tantalisingly within our grasp.
~Clive Lewis

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The older I get, the more I feel that’s all we are: a big bunch of feelings and instincts all wrapped up in some brief encounter with intellect.
~Timothy Spall

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For more than 40 years now, relentlessly, I have been pursuing brief encounters with the great and the good.
~Gyles Brandreth (broadcaster, former MP)

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn’t want to be a journalist ‒ I wanted to be a historian.
~Robert Darnton

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~Carlo Perassi: In Brief (6:32) beyond time… followed by a meditation

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~PBS NewsHour: Brief But Spectacular (3:13) a Dancer and a Choreographer take on communicating through movement

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~DEVELOP Tube: Eugene Richards • In This Brief Life (2:26) images, not looking away

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The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society – more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.
~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
~Steve Wozniak

For a brief time in the 1850s, the telegraph companies of England and the United States thought that they could (and should) preserve every message that passed through their wires. Millions of telegrams ‒ in fireproof safes. Imagine the possibilities for history!
~James Gleick

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If investors avoid the Treasury market, we could be unable to pay off maturing securities, which would mean an immediate default. Market participants generally agree that even a brief default would create potentially catastrophic risks to the financial system, like the meltdown of 2008.
~Jerome Powell

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I did a brief visit at Google X, and they have these little push scooters that you can go from one end of the compound to the other, and the floors are very smooth to maximize efficiency of the push scooters.
~Thomas Middleditch

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I like being to the point. It is not my nature to talk too much or indulge in loose talk. I like being brief, and beyond a certain point, I have nothing to say.
~Mohammad Azharuddin

It is such a great fault to talk too much that, in business and conversation, if what is good is also brief, it is doubly good, and one gains by brevity what one often loses by an excess of words.
~Madeleine de Souvré

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I went through a brief phase years ago of getting Men’s Health then I realised there are actually only three ways to do a sit-up and they’re just repackaging it endlessly.
~Frankie Boyle

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If you give people unlimited time and money, they’ll do things the same old way. But if they have to achieve the goal in a brief time, they’ll either give up or try something new.
~Peter Diamandis

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Use your development time to brief analysts and industry press. Use these influencers as your eyes and ears to let you know what else is being developed by competitors so that you can be the first to market, and don’t make the mistake of launching an also-ran product.
~Jay Samit

Companies often visit my office, or invite me to theirs, to brief me on new products, Web sites, or software before they are released ‒ usually a few weeks or days ahead of time. I don’t review most of these products.
~Walt Mossberg

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The obsession required to see a feature through from concept to release is not a rational thing to do with your brief time on this planet. Nor is it something to which an intelligent person should aspire.
~Yahoo Serious

It’s what Shakespeare’s mission was ‒ to illuminate our thoughts and struggles and bring about the possibility of getting the most we can out of a day as opposed to least in this brief moment we’re here.
~Mandy Patinkin

There is very little room for relaxation, but as long as I capitalize on those brief moments of peace, I’m okay with that.
~Maelle Gavet

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I played rugby in the winter, cricket in the summer, and for a brief period was on the books at Cardiff City. Athletics was only sports day for me. In fact, I never really liked it. I was never too keen on a sport that didn’t have a ball at your feet.
~Lynn Davies

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Considering the relatively brief careers of professional athletes, teenagers who are good enough to play at the highest level should be able to exploit that market.
~David Shields

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After I lost to Chad Mendes, that was a point in my life when everything had changed, I really didn’t know why I was fighting anymore, for a brief amount of time.
~Cub Swanson (MMA)

My life had no meaning at all. I found only brief interludes of satisfaction. It was like my whole life had been about my whole basketball career.
~Pete Maravich

Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity.
~Jennifer Capriati (tennis)

It’s a difficult job to do, but that is why we do it. Only so many people can do it. But it, it enables you to… for a brief period of time to kind of get away. You have to go back and deal with, but it’s a good escape.
~Brett Favre (quarterback)

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.
~Jimmy Connors

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Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.
~Michael Johnson

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§ VIDEO:

A good script and a good brief from the director is enough to let me know what is expected of me.
~Sanjay Dutt

My greatest strength as an actor is that I follow my director’s brief completely. The film is always the director’s visual baby.
~John Abraham

I like to have the actors do their thing. And then brief them what to do differently in take two.
~Vikramaditya Motwane

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I am an engineer by profession, but I knew I wanted to act. My parents always encouraged me, and when my father shifted to Mumbai for work for a brief while, I came along.
~Kriti Sanon

I went through a brief phase when I thought of other career options: being an air hostess and even a psychologist. But eventually, my destiny led me to acting. Moreover, my dad being an actor, I have grown up in a very filmi environment. I was encouraged to watch films since I was a child.
~Shraddha Kapoor

When you are a pan-Indian actress, you are doing films in different languages and invariably, you end up not signing films in one language or the other for a brief period.
~Amyra Dastur

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You do a straight play for three months, four months, maybe. It’s so brief. And then you’re on to the next thing. I loved that. I love that rhythm and that pace.
~Kerry Bishe (Scrubs)

I do miss sometimes being onstage, because when I do film and television, it’s usually so brief and funny.
~John Michael Higgins

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I find myself apologising for not being a proper actor. I never intended to be involved in the film industry and still do feel that, with the exception of a couple of brief skirmishes with the film industry.
~Tilda Swinton

Screen is satisfying because it’s so technical and mysterious. It’s like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it’s either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor ‒ and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free.
~Toby Stephens

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Live performance really terrifies me. I haven’t done it, really, in years. I think that’s why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.
~Mindy Kaling

I just have this fear that I’ll get on stage and there’ll be that brief moment of adrenalin and I’ll forget my line.
~Daniel Radcliffe

I find I like the spotlight for a very brief period of time… and I sort of need it. But then, the minute that it’s done, I have to sort of go hide. So I was never really meant, I think, to be a performer for a living.
~Jason Robert Brown (theatre)

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From ‘Midnight Cowboy‘ to ‘Taxi Driver‘ is a brief era whose grit, beauty, and violence has been quite mythologized.
~Rachel Kushner

For a brief moment, Ian Fleming made being an Englishman seem sexy, even to the French. He should have been awarded a knighthood, even possibly the Garter.
~Michael Korda

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It is often pointed out to me that, in a brief time, I have gone from unknown film editor to star of ‘Gomer Pyle,’ guest star in two TV specials, and a night club headliner, and that this must necessarily have wrought some deep changes in me.
~Jim Nabors

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few ‒ but by January 2006, I wanted out.
~Nick Harkaway

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In a business that’s driven purely by economics, the fact that one or two unique shows happen to get on and reach a public for a brief time doesn’t constitute a trend.
~Mark Frost

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When we were shooting for ‘Jatt & Juliet 2,’ the director, Anurag Singh did not tell us that this was going to be a sequel. The only brief given to us was that, ‘go and have fun on the sets.’
~Diljit Dosanjh

That was fun to play. There were some nice special effects coupled with some really nice moments with child and wife. I also was able to age to about 100 years in ‘Brief Candle.’
~Richard Dean Anderson

Sally Field taught me to do needlepoint on ‘Steel Magnolias,’ and a standby painter on ‘Pelican Brief‘ taught me to knit. I’m pretty good at it now!
~Julia Roberts

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The director Sofia Coppola’s new comic melodrama, ‘Lost in Translation,’ thoroughly and touchingly connects the dots between three standards of yearning in movies: David Lean’s ‘Brief Encounter,’ Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise‘ and Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love.’
~Elvis Mitchell

I got into film school. I went and didn’t know anything about it. Over the course of two years, I kind of got kind of good at it. You know, I had a brief moment where I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I didn’t know you needed light to expose film.
~Barry Jenkins

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People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.
~Kevin Hart

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I would not want to do one-episode television ‒ that’s just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.
~Jerry Lewis

To me, it seems like both ‘Brief Interviews‘ and ‘The Office‘ deal with characters that see themselves differently than the world sees them.
~John Krasinski

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The plot of ‘Stranger Things‘ is so simple that even a brief description risks spoiling it.
~Michelle Dean

In its brief 14-episode run, ‘Firefly‘ gave viewers as much chance of witnessing a horseback chase or train robbery as a laser gun and spacefight in any given episode. Snappy one-liners and silly hats were a constant, of course.
~Jay Kristoff

I remember ‘Resurrection Boulevard.’ It was on for such a brief moment, but they were trying to do a good, Latino, Mexican-American family with a patriarch.
~Tanya Saracho

‘Party Down‘ is the most fun I’ve ever had working in my life. We shoot 10-episode seasons and we shoot it in 10 weeks, so it’s very brief: 4-day episode shoots. You never get sick of anybody, and it never feels like a drag. It’s way, way, way too short.
~Lizzy Caplan

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Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the ’60s and ’70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death.
~Tom Shales

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~Robin Glass: Brevity (3:19) test results, life changing

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~Katie Hilliard: brief. (14:17) suite cast, gallery setting

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~BalletBoyz: Brief (3:00) the past meets on a bus

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~Room 18 Films: TOAST (13:28) weekly encounter, a prickly start

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Few developments central to the history of art have been so misrepresented or misunderstood as the brief, brave, glorious, doomed life of the Bauhaus ‒ the epochally influential German art, architecture, crafts, and design school that was founded in Goethe’s sleepy hometown of Weimar in 1919.
~Martin Filler

The Futurists believed in the machine, in making a great big fuss, in being young. For a brief moment, they were arguably the most influential aesthetic provocateurs in the world.
~Jonathan Galassi

One thing the futurists never get right, though, is that the extreme desire for polyester only lasted a brief period in the ’70s!
~Lea Thompson

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I like the idea of trying to influence society by taking a brief, then maybe subtly changing it or looking at it in a new way to see what interesting things can emerge.
~Richard Rogers

For thousands of years, we’ve insisted that art can make us better people. Unless a brief can be fashioned that, by its very nature, art appeals only to the best in people and never the darkness, which defies both logic and intuition, then we have to acknowledge that art can make some of us worse.
~Steve Erickson

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I think I work much the same way I always have. I’m trying to interpret something emotionally visually. I’m reading the brief or article, or listening to the music, and deciding where that sends me, and what would it look like.
~David Carson (graphic design)

I turned my hand to costume design a few years ago when I created the outfits for ‘This Is the Sea,’ with Richard Harris and Samantha Morton. It’s a very different discipline to being a fashion designer, though ‒ you have to rein in your own vision and work to a tight brief.
~John Rocha

I haven’t been to Oxbridge. I haven’t even been to a London art school. My qualifications are pretty meagre for such a brief, but I just trust in my sense of what I’m interested in and my mission of clarity.
~Grayson Perry

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Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‘Artist.’
~Edgar Allan Poe

For the most part, works of mine are untitled. There was a brief period where I had poetic titles for works, and they’re embarrassing now. I think, for the most part, it’s not something that I have talent for.
~Robert Gober (sculptor)

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A girl must have an indefinable magic, real character, a strong sense of self. Her role is to respond to the brief of a photographer or communicate the vision of a designer ‒ while making whatever she does look utterly effortless and whatever she wears utterly seamless.
~Erin O’Connor

Well, in brief, I was discovered by a lady called Beth Boldt. She had also been a model. She used to take pictures of the girls she found, and she took a picture of me one day in my school uniform, and it all kind of started from there.
~Naomi Campbell

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There’s a weird cloud around you when you’re recognizable. It was a brief window for me. I think you have to have a pathological need for attention of any type, negative or positive, to thrive in that kind of situation. And I only want compliments.
~Diablo Cody

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I don’t think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the ’90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.
~Janeane Garofalo

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Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.
~Franklin D Roosevelt

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
~Alan Bennett

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No aspect of my brief and mild fame actually made me happier.
~Chris Gethard

I hated my brief fame. We had TV vans camped outside my house, reporters hounded me… people i’d know for years started treating me differently.
~Malcolm Wilson

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It’s a funny thing about cities: Some have brief, bright moments of cultural and political dominance, decades- or centuries-long spells when they seem the center of their particular nation, or region, or empire… only to later fall into obscurity and disrepair, never to regain their former glory.
~Hanya Yanagihara

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening.
~Kage Baker

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A brief visit to Nepal started my insatiable love for Asian art.
~Richard Ernst

I went to China for a brief working visit, and I thought that Shanghai was interesting, but Beijing totally grabbed me.
~Marcus Brigstocke

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Our increasingly electrified, electronic, and data-driven society places steadily rising demand on reliable baseload power ‒ that is, on electricity available 24/7/365. Servers never sleep, nor does air conditioning during hot nights, and in Asia’s megacities, subways and electric trains take only brief naps between midnight and 5 A.M.
~Vaclav Smil

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I had always been interested in mythology. I suppose my brief stay in Wales during World War II influenced my writing, too. It was an amazing country. It has marvelous castles and scenery.
~Lloyd Alexander

Warwick Castle, built of the very centuries, cannot be expected to alter with time’s ‘brief hours and weeks’ – at least, with so few of them as fall to one poor mortal’s lot. From visit to visit, I find it as unchanged as the multiplication table.
~Katharine Lee Bates

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A brief experience with a Radcliffe girl got very bad very quickly. I was so destroyed by it that I left and went to Mexico for a semester, where I have cousins. I learned how to speak Spanish, which was really important for my life. It was wonderful going to Mexico, learning another culture and a language.
~Whit Stillman

For a brief period, I had a gentleman’s farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York.
~Alan Menken

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§ MUSIC:
Times of my life, brief periods without music, have completely felt dangerously over the edge.
~Tom Jenkinson

It is my hope that during my brief passage through this universe, that I may share with you the joy of hearing the music of the stars… knowing that the composer was from a distant place and the songs were written eons ago, which now fall gently on this place for all to hear.
~Richard Baker

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I tend to write short, brief snippets ‒ I lean toward the chamber music end as opposed to the symphony end of things.
~K A Applegate

If you only do little clusters ‒ three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another ‒ you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer’s mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.
~Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

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In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn’t last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the ’60’s is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.
~Archie Shepp

My show is a sensory assault… in a very brief manner ‒ the show is only 25 minutes long.
~Kesha

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Music and musical instruments were proximal to my life from very early on ‒ I took piano lessons for a brief time, but then my dad had a guitar and when he was not playing it, I would pick it up and mess with it. He jokes that I used to complain that it hurt my fingers.
~Julien Baker

~

I sing because it takes, for a brief second, it takes a little from my past, and just in that moment, I’m just happy and I’m glad to be who I am. That’s the reason why.
~Michael Sam (figgy baby)

When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it ‒ these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.
~Washed Out

The Ramones are an original rock and roll group of 1975, and their songs are brief, to the point, and every one a potential hit single.
~Tommy Ramone

The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.
~Buffy Sainte-Marie

~ ~

~Skeevy Daniel: Steely Dan • Reelin’ in the Years (4:35)  nostalgia briefly

~

~Dawn Golden: Brief Encounter (5:20) somber thru’out, there’s a wait for the payoff

~

~Eloh Kush: A Brief Encounter (2:51) celebrating zaftig love

~

~nobodaddy: Brief Encounter (3:36) what might have been

~

~Limu013: The Brief Encounter • Human (3:57) motown, the sound

~

We’re drinking my friend,
To the end of a brief episode,
Make it one for my baby,
And one more for the road.
~Johnny Mercer (Bette Midler on Johnny Carson’s last show)

Lesley Gore’s part-time field was pop singer, and in her brief but urgent prime, she was the Queen of Teen Angst. She endured heartbreak as a birthday girl betrayed by her beau in ‘It’s My Party,’ savored revenge in the sequel ‘Judy’s Turn to Cry‘ and belted the proto-feminist anthem ‘You Don’t Own Me.’
~Richard Corliss
You Don’t Own Me
Leslie Gore lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAqa1iMd0DA
Leslie Gore live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQuf_4KOwtY
Three Wives Club movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRLdtDYoVX8

~ ~

Most of us know when we are about to react emotionally. We can feel it. Often there is a brief warning before the amygdala hijack. For some of us, it is butterflies in the stomach; for some, it is an increased heart rate, and for others, it is a feeling of agitation.
~Elizabeth Thornton

The flame of anger, bright and brief, sharpens the barb of love.
~Walter Savage Landor

~

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone’s saying I love you.
~Judith Viors

~

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.
~Elizabeth Bowen

You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.
~Hector Hugh Munro

~

Infinity is a way to describe the incomprehensible to the human mind. In a way, it notates a mystery. That kind of mystery exists in relationships. A lifetime is not enough to know someone else. It provides a brief glimpse.
~Simon McBurney

I first met Linda Lawrence in March 1965 in the green room of ‘Ready Steady Go!,’ the British pop TV show. Linda was a friend of one of the co-hosts. She had an art-school vibe, and after a brief conversation, I asked her to dance to a soul record playing. As we jazz danced, I fell in love.
~Donovan

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
~David Herbert Lawrence

So on May 1, 1987, at Gary’s invitation, I agreed to see him one last time ‒ to confront him face-to-face about his sincerity and with the intention of ending our brief relationship.
~Donna Rice

~

We humans are hard to deal with. We are a loud, complex and demanding bunch. Often, we are best dealt with from a safe distance and for only brief periods of time. This could be why a lot of marriages fail.
~Henry Rollins

Once you do embark upon the separation or divorce process, it is very important to remember three key things: Be kind, be reasonable, be brief. Remember that this person will no longer be your spouse, but he or she will continue to be your co-parent, family member, and perhaps business partner in certain assets or entities.
~Laura Wasser

I’ve never really lived with somebody. Only for very brief periods. I learned I’m not a good roommate. I’m better off when we visit each other. I like the mystery.
~Marlon Wayans

It was just a very short period of time that I had a brief marriage.
~Tom Green (currently back with Drew)

—

I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was horrified by the notion.
~Jonathan Franzen

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.
~Steve Jobs

~

I distanced myself, relatively, from my parents for a year or so in my late twenties. It was necessary for me to feel my autonomy. Other than that brief gap, we have always been a very close family.
~Jennifer Ehle

I spend a lot of time thinking about this business of letting go ‒ letting go of the children God gives to us for such a brief time before they go off on their own; letting go of old homes, old friends, old places and old dreams.
~Susan Estrich

~

I don’t know if it’s that my own childhood felt brief, or I grew up too fast, or I was pushing myself too much at a young age, but I do feel like I am clinging to a certain childlike quality in myself, as a result of a childhood that was sometimes complicated.
~Shawn Levy

~

I remember seeing my father only twice as a child for brief visits. As I grew up, I invented a father who was larger than life ‒ stronger, smarter, more handsome, and even holier than other men.
~Kathryn Harrison

As a reporter, I spent a great deal of time in court. During brief breaks in testimony, I would often look at the spouse, usually the wife, of the accused. I began to wonder how listening to the details of a crime purportedly committed by your spouse would affect that person’s view of her husband.
~Fiona Barton

~

You have to steal time to be with family. You will always be busy, so just prioritise. I plan outings with my wife Gauri, whether it’s a quiet dinner or a brief vacation.
~Hiten Tejwani

—

There are many ways to be the odd girl out. Your pain can brief or lasting, visible to all or none, with one or many. One of the longest, quietest ways to be the odd girl out is to be friends with two girls who are closer to each other than to you.
~Rachel Simmons (author)

There was a brief period in college where I flirted with the idea of becoming a lawyer because my father was one. But I was cured of it rather swiftly.
~Laeta Kalogridis (writer, producer)

There was a brief period of time when I was very young where I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian ‒ largely because I liked cats ‒ but then somebody told me I would have to cut animals open, and that was the end of that.
~Marie Brennan (fantasy author)

When I was at high school, I thought it’d be nice to go into Air Force Academy and fly jets, but that was a very brief dream. Ha, ha. I’m too lanky to fit in the cockpit.
~Emily Robison (Dixie Chicks)

~

I think I was born at a time when an American male had so many advantages and opportunities that weren’t available to men before or after, just a very brief period.
~John Malkovich

~ ~

~ ~

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
~Dorothy Parker

Standup is like shorthand. Every bit must be both brief and profound or the audience will lose interest.
~Johnny Lever

Comedy writing is taking the brief thought and going with it.
~Chris O’Dowd

We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.
~Cullen Hightower

—

When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away.
~Anna Pavlova

Happiness is brief. It will not stay. God batters at its sails.
~Euripides

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.
~Herman Hesse

~

There is something wrong about the man who wants help. There is somewhere a deep defect, a want, in brief, a need, a crying need, somewhere about that man.
~Herman Melville

What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that’s toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.
~Moby

In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve.
~Theodor W Adorno

Insurance companies, government agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry all push for mental health care that is brief, intermittent, and focused on quick fixes, despite the fact that many people struggle with emotional difficulties that can only be addressed over time using special psychodynamic skills.
~Robert J Waldinger

~

If human lives be, for their very brevity, sweet, then beast lives are sweeter still.
~Isobelle Carmody

After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all ‘in my mind,’ I am once again officially allergic to dogs.
~Josh Radnor

—

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
~William Cullen Bryant

Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that.
~Elizabeth Berg

~

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.
~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.
~Mordecai Richler

I don’t think people would climb mountains or jump off bridges with parachutes or kayak Class V rapids if those things didn’t offer the brief and horrible illusion of imminent death. They would just be complicated, time-consuming endeavors that we’d steer well clear of because they got in the way of real life.
~Sebastian Junger

~

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.
~Steve Jobs

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave, one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.
~Muhammad Iqbal (comma added for clarity ~Ed Note)

~

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
~Vladimir Nabokov

~

One idea I explore in my stand-up show is whether, if you try looking at the universe rationally and avoid coping mechanisms like mysticism or religion, you can still be happy knowing you are going to die after a brief time on this spinning ball.
~Robin Ince

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?
~Frederic Chopin

~

Franklin was the best known of the Founding Fathers. His death could not go without some sort of official notice. The House of Representatives, after listening to a brief tribute by James Madison, voted to wear badges of mourning for two months and then got on with business.
~Edmund Morgan

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

The brevity of human life gives a melancholy to the profession of the architect.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
~Algernon Charles Swinburne

—

The mountains seem to have conquered us long before we set foot on them, and they will remain long after our brief existence. This indomitable force of the mountains gives us humans a blank canvas on which to paint the drive of discovery and, in the process, test the limits of human performance.
~Conrad Anker

I love to see a wood full of bluebells. Growing up in the Kent countryside, I have special memories of this brief annual spectacle.
~Gary Hume

Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet. By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.
~Stewart Udall

~~

~ ~

HONORARY QUOTES

If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.
~Dennis Roth

If you can’t explain something in a few words, try fewer.
~Robert Brault

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.
~Blaise Pascal

~

Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints, and gods use short and positive speech.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
~Pope

~

When one has no design but to speak the plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass.
~Richard Steele

A few sentences are enough to tell the truth.
~Robert Sarah

~

A parsimony of words prodigal of sense.
~Benjamin Disraeli

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas.
~Oliver Markus Malloy

~

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
~Thomas Jefferson

Writing is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent elimination.
~Louise Brooks

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

A vast meaning is unfolded in each line, with such power that a sentence only a line long would suffice for a whole life’s training.
~Rufinus

Much wisdom often goes with the fewest words.
~Sophocles

~

People who know little are usually great talkers while men who know much say little.
~Jean Jacques Rousseau

They talk most who have the least to say.
~Matthew Prior

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
~George Eliot

Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.
~Will Durant

~

One rare, strange virtue in speeches, and the secret of their mastery, is, that they are short.
~Halleck

(Gettysburg Address lasted two minutes, contained 272 words, was delivered after Edward Everett spoke for two hours. ~Ed Note)

~

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
~Woodrow Wilson

—

When asked his greatest surprise — the brevity of life.
~Billy Graham

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.
~Rudyard Kipling

it is the brevity of life which makes it tolerable; its experiences have value because they have an end.
~Winifred Holtby

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?
~Stephen King

~ ~

@Writers Platform

This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.
~Katherine Mansfield

I had a Kindle for a brief while, but I dropped it in the ocean, and that was the end of electronic reading for me.
~Elin Hilderbrand

~

What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.
~Martial

~

For me writing biographies is impossible, unless they are brief and concise, and these are, I feel, the most eloquent.
~Alfred Nobel

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.
~Marcus Tullius Cicero

~

I used to enjoy using dots where they would be least expected, not at the end of a sentence but in the middle, creating the effect… of a skipped beat. It seemed to me the mind reacted ‒ first!… in dots, dashes, and exclamation points, then rationalized, drew up a brief, with periods.
~Tom Wolfe

Contractions, ‘U’ for ‘you’ and the like are wonderful to make communication brief and efficient ‒ but we wouldn’t want all our talk to be only brief and efficient. Taking pauses out of language would be like taking the net away from a tennis game. Where would all the fun go?
~Pico Iyer

Whatever brief delights it provides, mere strangeness in poetry and prose eventually leaves us cold, especially when we suspect the writer is stretching for effect to avoid the actual life before his eyes.
~Roger Rosenblatt

~

For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.
~John Ruskin

One false word, one extra word, and somebody’s thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important.
~Patricia Marx

There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.
~Josh Billings

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.
~Martin Luther

~

Brevities are the golden formations in the quartz of literature.
~James Lendall Basford

There is need of brevity, that the thought may run on.
~Horace

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.
~Edsger Dijkstra

When you introduce a moral lesson let it be brief.
~Horace

~

To write good poems is the secret of brevity.
~Dejan Stojanovic

The definition of Brevity: That which people believe would be a virtue ‒ in me!
~Greg Curtis

~

When a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.
~William Strunk, Jr

No weapons are more potent than brevity and simplicity.
~Katherine Cecil Thurston

~

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
~William Osler

Flannery O’Connor’s brief life and slim output were nonetheless marked by piercing powers of observation.
~Floyd Skloot

~

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.
~Philip Pullman

~

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
~Mohsin Hamid

After spending the last few years working on a serious novel set in Chechnya, I was drawn to both the brevity and casualness of Twitter, and wrote a series of tweets titled ‘The Erotic Inner Life of Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey.’
~Anthony Marra

There are risks in the sheer brevity of Twitter, and it’s actually quite an elegant art reducing what you have to say to 140 characters, and it’s something that I quite enjoy attempting to do.
~Richard Dawkins

Everyone on Twitter ‒ everyone on the Internet ‒ seems so damn certain. Brevity doesn’t allow for nuance…
~Rumaan Alam

~

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.
~Baltasar Gracian

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
~Horace

Never be so brief as to become obscure.
~Hosea Ballou

~

A brief short story may require only a few paragraphs after the climax. On the other hand, in his massive novel ‘The World According to Garp,’ John Irving’s denouement consisted of 10 separate sections, each devoted to an individual character’s fate and each almost a story in itself.
~Nancy Kress

That seems to be the definition of ‘novel’ for me: a story that hasn’t yet discovered a way to be brief.
~George Saunders

In a film we have limited time and space to say what we have to, hence the visual language and brevity needs to be paramount. In a novel, however, we can dissect each thought and emotion and build on it.
~Kanika Dhillon

I think a fictional invention grows according to its own development, not the author’s. Characters in fiction are not simply as alive as you and me, they are more alive. Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennett, and Don Quixote may not outlive the burning out of the sun, but they will certainly outlive the brief candle of our lives.
~Cynthia Ozick

~

I’m only a novelist on occasion. Many of my books are made up of brief texts collected together, short stories, or else they are books that have an overall structure but are composed of various texts.
~Italo Calvino

A ‘philosophical dictionary’ is not a dictionary of philosophy that you use to look up obscure thinkers or recondite terms. It is a collection of brief and pithy essays on diverse topics, informed by one vision, and usually arranged in alphabetical order.
~Ian Hacking

~

I don’t like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, ‘The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,’ almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges.
~Robert Pinsky

~

Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they’re also a total joy.
~Ali Smith

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.
~Annie Proulx

For me it’s a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe.
~Junot Diaz

~

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
~Edgar Allan Poe

Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.
~Maxine Hong Kingston

~

Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it. Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you’re creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it’s very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.
~Justin Theroux

~

In my brief writing life, it means I am still lucky that I have at least one more novel to complete. I do not expect that a story will arrive just because it is time to write another novel. It doesn’t happen that way.
~David Bergen

Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen’s tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!
~Lauren Kate

~

In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn’t initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him.
~Nancy Kress

Aside from a brief stint as a writing tutor during graduate school, I have managed to avoid respectable employment all my adult life.
~Jesse Kellerman (author)

~

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.
~Rudolf Virchow

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins.
~Michael Winter

~ ~

Prewritten Prompt: brief :: brevity

~ ~

Brevity in writing is what charity is to all other virtues ‒ righteousness is nothing without the one, nor authorship without the other.
~Sydney Smith

~

The longer I live, the more I am enabled to realize that I have but one life to live on Earth, and that this one life is but a brief life, for sowing, in comparison with eternity, for reaping.
~George Muller

I cannot imagine a more realistic faith than the Christian faith. At every turn, we are told we are death-determined creatures and that our lives, our all too brief lives, at the very least will be complex if not difficult.
~Stanley Hauerwas

Belief is not restricted to a brief affirmation based on imitation; rather, it has degrees and stages of development. It is like a seed growing into a fully grown, fruit-bearing tree
~Said Nursi

Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end.
~Saint Ignatius

~

They who grasp the world,
The Kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
Must pay with deepest misery of spirit,
Atoning unto God for a brief brightness.
~Stephen Phillips

~

Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.
~Thomas Ken

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.
~Eben Alexander

According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.
~Pema Chodron

I don’t believe in reincarnation. I feel like we’re here for such an appallingly brief period of time. I believe we each get this one trip, and if we’re really, really fortunate, maybe we get 70 or 80 years on Earth.
~Anthony Doerr

In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual.
~Robert Crumb (rogue cartoonist)

~

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.
~Jim Rohn

The religion I know most about, which is the Christian one, would simply say that it’s not really for one man or woman to know fully and to understand the nature of our brief human existence.
~Sebastian Faulks

When contrasted with the much longer time that life has been present, the course of Christianity thus far is but a brief moment.
~Kenneth Scott Latourette

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
~H L Mencken

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.
~George Santayana

~

Mortality is very brief but immeasurably important.
~Joseph B Wirthlin

We have always existed in different forms ‒ carbon, oxygen, water, heat. Maybe Heaven is this brief period when the elements realize they’re alive.
~Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

~

The drive was brief and the conversation limited, but oh, what a legacy of love! Father never read to me from the Bible about the good Samaritan. Rather, he took me with him and Uncle Elias in that old 1928 Oldsmobile and provided a living lesson I have always remembered.
~Thomas S Monson

~ ~

§ The Exercise:

one of the differences

clouds as kids play the sky
share the same racing chasing games
weather airways, whether hallways
glide past each other
wrestle together often
breathe as they sleep at night
live briefly
changing with time
but no one shames a cloud
for being the wrong shape

~

marry-go-round

once pledged forever
soon became never
victim of promise
agent of crime

court sorted it out
both sides put to rout
when in flux, out of prime
sublime rots into slime

love listed: deceased
dependence decreased
both parties released
find alone doesn’t rhyme

chorus:
all is brief
even eternity
everything changes
especially time

~

sexual tension

the exposure
exciting, indiscreet
the brown roundness of them
twin magnets of beauty
dark centers
pulling eyes to them
briefly
inside their veil
of discretion
when your eyes, lidded
turn away

~

5s ‘n 7s

winter, weathering onslaughts
seeding and greening of spring
summer season fun with drought
ripened colors fatal fall
all too brief, to die again

~

three gift languages
math music and words
breath of life meanings
time enters briefly
interweaves, leaves rules

~

brief ode: on plastic
cupboards of old containers
many without mates
nothing fits them anymore
biography of a life

~

the grind’s daily drive
between home life and office
long ride brief escape

~

quick-brief the torment
waiting the l’eagle reply
wisdom on display

~ ~

The Olio and Salmagundi of Quotes

There is a brief moment when all there is in a man’s mind and soul and spirit is reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record.
~Yousuf Karsh

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.
~Henri Cartier-Bresson

~

I think that as kids we all picture ourselves as the princess, the prince, and not really ever as the housekeeper or the comical alpaca or llama or what have you ‒ the sidekick. But as an adult, I’m such a huge fan of people who are funny and people who are, in very brief moments, able to do something that you would never think is possible.
~Betty Gabriel

It sounds deeply shallow, but for brief spells every member of the public can be fascinating.
~Graham Norton

~

Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about.
~E T Bell

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define;
Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.
~Thomas A Edison

~

Brevity is the soul of wit.
William Shakespeare

If brevity is the soul of wit then brevity and levity are the whole of it.
~Michael R Burch

~

If you be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams ‒ the more they are condensed the deeper they burn.
~John Dryden

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.
~George Santayana

~

Regret is a short, evocative and achingly beautiful word: an elegy to lost possibilities even in its brief annunciation.
~David Whyte

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
~Jean De La Bruyere

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The day Andrew Breitbart died. It hit me: How long do I have, and what am I afraid of? I realized that I have but a very brief time on this planet. Am I really going to spend it not saying what I believe and being who I am?
~Nick Searcy

The brevity of life is grace to walk on your own path.
~Lailah Gifty Akita

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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
~Samuel Butler

Nothing is more unseemly than to give very long legs to very brief ideas.
~Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

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Anytime you open your mouth there’s going to be someone who’s put off. I try to deal with that by keeping the topical portions of my show brief. I realize that some people wish my comments were briefer.
~John Hall

I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the world’s shortest speech. He said I will be so brief I have already finished, and he sat down.
~Gene Fowler

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The Olio Quote Harvest
https://azquotes.com, https://bqotd.com, https://brainyquote.com, https://quotefancy.com https://wisesayings.com

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Fun Tarts: https://gocomics.com

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The Salmagundi Video Harvest
https://venmo.com, https://vimeo.com, https://youtube.com

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