Keeping It Brief

by Peter Saint-Andre

2023-06-09

Epicurus once said: "Understand that a long discourse and a short one both achieve the same result." Although that's standard advice for writers (Yevgeny Zamyatin counselled "writing with 90-proof ink"), few follow it. Many books could have been long articles, many long articles could have been blog posts, and many blog posts could have been aphorisms. My journal entries average around 400 words these days, and I limit my books to around 100 pages. This is simple respect for you, the reader. Besides, I'd rather provoke difficult questions than provide definitive answers, because only you can answer those questions for yourself, anyway. Perhaps loving wisdom involves respecting your wisdom as much as my own...

(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)

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