[M]y ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book…
— Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
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There are writers who can express in a mere twenty pages things I sometimes need two whole lines for.
— Karl Kraus, Dicta and Contradicta
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Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word.
— Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
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Would you chatterboxes please shut up? I’m trying to concentrate on precisely how much to twitch my eyebrow to express what I’m thinking.