Funny Quotes
I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
"I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."— Mark Twain
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Meaning of this quote
Concise writing often requires more revision than lengthy writing. The joke explains verbosity as a shortage of editing time.
Key takeaway:
Allow time to revise when clarity and brevity matter.
Origin of the quote
A family of sayings with a documented seventeenth-century Pascal antecedent.
Who actually said this?
Likely misattributedQuote Investigator finds the Twain credit late and unsupported. The exact modern English formulation is not Pascal’s original French sentence either.
