The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. — August Wilson
So mathematical truth prefers simple words since the language of truth is itself simple. — Tycho Brahe
Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn't about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way. — John P. Kotter
Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across. — Guy Kawasaki
The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed. — Jeff Greenfield
Say what you have to say in the fewest possible words. — Arthur Bryant
What is lofty can be said in any language. What is mean should be said in none. — Maimonides
Plain English Quotes
MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman. — Ambrose Bierce
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. — Mark Twain
While he has not, in my hearing, spoken the English language, he makes it perfectly plain that he understands it. And he uses his ears, tail, eyebrows, various rumbles and grunts, the slant of his great cold nose or a succession of heartrending sighs to get his meaning across. — Jean Little
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Communists, socialists and fascists everywhere, from Mr. Obama upward, have taken to the global warming cause like a quack to colored water. Just about every word they utter on this subject is a falsehood calculated to deceive, or - in plain English - a lie. — Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
[The play] is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English. — Ben Jonson
The English, the plain English, of the politest address of a gentleman to a lady is, I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant: Pray be so good as to let me be your Lord and Master. — Samuel Richardson
A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
Jane Austen wrote six of the most beloved novels in the English language, we are informed at the end of Becoming Jane, and so she did. The key word is beloved. Her admirers do not analyze her books so much as they just plain love them to pieces. — Roger Ebert
Men of Science would do well to talk plain English. The most abstruse questions can very well be discussed in our own tongue ... I make a particular appeal to the botanists, who appear to delight in troublesome words. — Oliver Lodge
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. — Bertrand Russell
A passage is not plain English - still less is it good English - if we are obliged to read it twice to find out what it means. — Dorothy L. Sayers
Plain Speaking Quotes
We are not anti-American. We do not dislike Americans though we abhor American imperialism in all its manifestations. But then, so do many Americans. Many of them have said that even more forthrightly than we have, and many of them have suffered more than any of us for their plain speaking. — Tommy Douglas
Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use. — George Bernard Shaw
You know, we spend so much of our lives not saying the things we want to say. The things we should say. We speak in code, we send little messages. Origami. So now, plainly, simply. I want to say that I love you both. — Michael Scofield
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings.
Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly and in a spirit of love. — Harriet Beecher Stowe
Love is a child that talks in broken language, yet then he speaks most plain. — John Dryden
Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen. — Golda Meir
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
This provision (the 4th Amendment) speaks for itself. Its plain object is to secure the perfect enjoyment of that great right of the common law, that a man's house shall be his own castle, privileged against all civil and military intrusion. — Joseph Story
But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans. — William Peter Blatty
My plainness of speech makes people hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth. — Plato
To speak but little becomes a woman; and she is best adorned who is in plain attire. — Democritus
Plain And Simple Quotes
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. — Alan Watts
I love to be clean. I wear the same things, all of my clothes pretty much look the same. I'm a plain and simple type of guy. I don't really do a lotta busy colors and things of that nature. I feel like less is more. — Kevin Gates
On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. — Karl Marx
Love will find its way through all languages on its own.
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. — Alan Watts
Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile. — Judith Guest
Asking women to respect themselves in order to ‘earn’ the right to be treated like a human being is total horseshit. But suggesting that you have the right to treat her exactly as you please because she didn’t adhere to your archaic views of feminine propriety is misogyny, plain and simple. — Clementine Ford
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one! — Yevgeny Yevtushenko
It matters not how simple the food - a chop, steak or a plain boiled or roast joint, but let it be of good quality and properly cooked, and everyone who partakes of it will enjoy it. — Alexis Soyer
Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. — Judith Guest
A joke is a good camouflage. Next best comes sentiment... But the best camouflage of all - in my opinion - is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it. — Max Frisch
Being Plain Quotes
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. — H. L. Mencken
To me it seems as plain as can be that the Bible declares that all the wicked will God destroy; again, that those who, during the Millennial age when brought to a knowledge of the truth, shall prove willful sinners will be punished with everlasting destruction. — Charles Taze Russell
No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful. — Eleanor Roosevelt
The ability to speak several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.
people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue. — John Hancock
When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. — Jackson Pollock
The attitude of kindness is everyday stuff like a great pair of sneakers. Not frilly. Not fancy. Just plain and comfortable. — Barbara Johnson
In your silence, when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present, you are getting in tune with existence.
The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit! — J. K. Rowling
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them. — Werner Heisenberg
Do not let the world's adversity either stifle your enthusiasm, nor blind your vision. The struggle towards excellence must ever be conducted on the high plains of self-confidence, a sense of purpose, and positive thought. — Ronald McNair
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands. — Oscar Wilde
In plain proletarian worker's language, it takes two to tango. — Fred Hampton
His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish. — Charles XII of Sweden
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. — George Orwell
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If you can't describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven't got a plan. 'But,' people may say, 'I've got a complex strategy. It can't be reduced to a page.' That's nonsense. That's not a complex strategy. It's a complex thought about the strategy. — Lawrence Bossidy
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine. — Charles Darwin
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
When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart. — Mark Twain
Each stage of development, remember, has a dialectic of progress--in plain language, every new development is good news, bad news. — Ken Wilber
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. — Mark Twain
When you catch an adjective, kill it. — Mark Twain
Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. — Werner Heisenberg
Which I wish to remark-- And my language is plain,-- That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar. — Bret Harte
A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well link'd; Tell not as new what ev'ry body knows; and, new or old, still hasten to a close. — William Cowper
People in general would rather die than forgive. It's THAT hard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin. — Sue Monk Kidd
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. — Samuel Johnson
Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I knew, who would never say 'the weather grew cold,' but that 'winter begins to salute us.' I have no patience for such coxcombs. — Dorothy Osborne
I wondered if all of us churchgoers were just exhausted by grief. For the dying priest and us, I thought, "God" always refused to become glorious, instead stubbornly remaining plain, a headache, a sorrowful knot of language. — Virginia Heffernan
It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered. — J. R. R. Tolkien
For me people are people, without meaning to sound corny, it's a plain natural fact, music is a universal language and I've always known that and observed that and treated music with great respect accordingly. — John Lydon
Plainly, children learn their language. I don't speak Swahili. And it cannot be that my language is 'an innate property of our brain.' Otherwise I would have been genetically programmed to speak (some variety of) English. — Noam Chomsky
The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. — Werner Heisenberg
What does purpose mean? It means the deepest desire for our short lives to mean something. . . . To speak a language of purpose is to return to first principles and to be able to answer, in plain English, the plain questions of Why? Why should we chip in to help someone else? Why should we defer gratification? Why should we care about the long term? Why should we trust anyone who seems to be limiting our ability to do what we want? — Eric Liu
The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence. — George Henry Lewes
It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is. — Anthony Doerr
Would I describe a preacher, I would express him simple, grave, sincere; In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impress'd Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty men. — William Cowper
The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it. — H. L. Mencken
I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes. — Thomas Paine
Language designers want to design the perfect language. They want to be able to say, 'My language is perfect. It can do everything.' But it's just plain impossible to design a perfect language, because there are two ways to look at a language. One way is by looking at what can be done with that language. The other is by looking at how we feel using that language-how we feel while programming. — Yukihiro Matsumoto
It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. — Mark Twain
Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience. — Neil Postman
I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. — Jean-Paul Sartre
In Conclusion
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