Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
A polite apology for the length of a message when there was no time to shorten it.
In plain terms
I apologize for writing so much since I did not have time to write less.
What can you take from it?
Honesty about constraints is a simple way to apologize for verbosity.

Where it applies

  • letter writing
  • correspondence
  • casual communication

Putting it to work

  • explain message length
  • acknowledge constraints

Questions to consider

  • Is it better to be brief or thorough?
  • How do we manage time in communication?

Another view

The statement is tautological and offers no actual solution to the length.

More from Mark Twain

  1. Tomorrow is the yesterday of two days from now.

    Permalink to quote #206

  2. Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.

    Permalink to quote #208

  3. Golf is a good walk spoiled.

    Permalink to quote #205

Related quotes

  1. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, …

    Elizabeth HardwickElizabeth Hardwick quote #4

  2. We expect you are, honest Shaun, we agreed, but from franking machines, limricked, that in the end it may well turn out, we hear to be you, our belated, who wi…

    James JoyceJames Joyce quote #50

  3. We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath o…

    Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe quote #148