Clarity Quotes

How much I love every thing that is decided and open!

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

If a word means everything, then in means nothing.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

I know what I want to do and it makes sense to get going.

Avoid miscommunication. The price you pay for it is horrendous.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.

Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

The man of wisdom is never of two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid.

Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.

We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

Be not careless in deeds, nor confused in words, nor rambling in thought.

It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

Putting down on paper what you have to say is an important part of writing, but the words and ideas have to be shaped and cleaned, cleaned as severely as a dog cleans a bone, cleaned until there's not a shred of anything superfluous.

You will never be indecisive if you know your purpose.

Truth is self-evident, nonviolence is its maturest fruit. It is contained in truth, but is not self-evident.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity, and the sunlight of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity-nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness.

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him.

No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one.

Your thoughts are a veil on the face of the Moon. That Moon is your heart, and those thoughts cover your heart. So let them go, just let them fall into the water.

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .

It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of government.

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

Love is many things. It is varied. One thing love is not, is unsure.

Great communication depends on two simple skills-context, which attunes a leader to the same frequency as his or her audience, and delivery, which allows a leader to phrase messages in a language the audience can understand.

It is sheer laziness not compressing thought into a reasonable space.

A problem defined, is a problem half solved.

It is useless to try to stir the dirt Out of the muddy water, As it will become murkier. But leave it alone, And if it should be cleared; It will become clear by itself.

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.

All decision-making is a values-clarifying exercise.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

A SEEING eye is better than three hundred blind men's: The eye can distinguish pearls from pebbles.

Definite speech means clarity of mind.

It is better to have no ideas than false ones.

It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even-quench thirst any more?

Remove the fear, and the answer comes into focus.

Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.

The man who actually knows just what he wants in life has already gone a long way toward attaining it.

One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.

Those who reach decisions promptly and definitely, know what they want, and generally get it.

Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.

We can wake ourselves up, discover in ourselves an energy that was hidden there, and act with more clarity, more force.

Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.

How do you turn the invisible into the visible? The first step is to define your dream precisely; the only limit to what you can achieve is the extent of your ability to define with precision that which you desire.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

Night had come—night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day.

In speaking, it is best to be clear and say just enough to convey the meaning.

In stillness the muddied water returns to clarity.

If you keep a clear vision for your future, it will pull you like a magnet through your toughest times.

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

When we feel joyful, euphoric, happy, we are more open to life, more capable of seeing things clearly and handling daily tensions.

It is not that we don't know the right answers, it is just that we don't ask the right questions.