Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Poetry shows how few words carry great power and discourages excessive talking.
In plain terms
Poems prove a little can mean a lot and stops people from talking too much.
What can you take from it?
Concise language has greater impact.

Where it applies

  • writing classes
  • literary analysis
  • public speaking

Putting it to work

  • practice concise writing
  • study poetry
  • refine speech

Questions to consider

  • How does word count affect meaning?
  • When is brevity most powerful?

Another view

The claim ignores contexts where verbosity is necessary for clarity or persuasion.

More from Ralph Waldo Emerson

  1. A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster-bank or among…

    Permalink to quote #21
  2. There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

    Permalink to quote #23
  3. The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself ... The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversio…

    Permalink to quote #20

Related quotes

  1. Difficile est proprie communia dicere.

    HoraceHorace quote #38
  2. Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence.

    Joseph JoubertJoseph Joubert quote #100
  3. The poem goes form the poet's gibberish to The gibberish of the vulgate and back again.

    Wallace StevensWallace Stevens quote #143