Accordingly let all redundancy be avoided, all stringing together of remarks which have no meaning and are not worth perusal.  A writer must make a sparing use of the reader’s time, patience and attention; so as to lead him to believe that his author writes what is worth careful study, and will reward the time spent upon it.  It is always better to omit something good than to add that which is not worth saying at all.  This is the right application of Hesiod’s maxim, [Greek:  pleon aemisu pantos][1]—­the half is more than the whole. Le secret pour etre ennuyeux, c’est de tout dire.  Therefore, if possible, the quintessence only! mere leading thoughts! nothing that the reader would think for himself.  To use many words to communicate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity.  To gather much thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

[Footnote 1:  Works and Days, 40.]

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been simple.  This is so, partly because it then takes unobstructed possession of the hearer’s whole soul, and leaves him no by-thought to distract him; partly, also, because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by the arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes from the thing itself.  For instance, what declamation on the vanity of human existence could ever be more telling than the words of Job? Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery.  He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

For the same reason Goethe’s naive poetry is incomparably greater than Schiller’s rhetoric.  It is this, again, that makes many popular songs so affecting.  As in architecture an excess of decoration is to be avoided, so in the art of literature a writer must guard against all rhetorical finery, all useless amplification, and all superfluity of expression in general; in a word, he must strive after chastity of style.  Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it remains.  The law of simplicity and naivete holds good of all fine art; for it is quite possible to be at once simple and sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying only what is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things which everyone can supply for himself.  This involves correct discrimination between what it necessary and what is superfluous.  A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of being grammatical.  It shows lamentable want of judgment to weaken the expression of a thought, or to stunt the meaning of a period for the sake of using a few words less.  But this is the precise endeavor of that false brevity nowadays so much in vogue, which proceeds by leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and logic.