"Brevity is the best recommendation of speech,..." - Quote by Marcus Tullius Cicero

“There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.”

“A man does not wonder at what he sees frequently, even though he be ignorant of the reason. If anything happens which he has not seen before, he calls it a prodigy.”

“The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.”

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

“To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.”

“My liege, and madam, to expostulate What majesty should be, what duty is, Why day is day, night night, and time is time, Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.”

“A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak and quick to act.”

“Silence is not always a sign of wisdom, but babbling is ever a mark of folly.”

“How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation -- for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.”