Quotes & Sayings About Pithy

Unrequited love," I'd say. He'd look at me sideways in that cunning way he did and say, "what about it?" and I'd reply, "it's not your color." Pithy. Just to show him that I'd noticed. Or maybe I'd show myself to her and say, "Guess I'm not the only one who uses humans around here." And then I'd summon some of Owain's hounds to chew off the bottom bits of her legs. Then she wouldn't fit just right into his arms. She'd be too short. It'd be like hugging a midget.
Nuala- pg. 75 — Maggie Stiefvater

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing. — Jonathan Stroud

We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy "one word" Zen. When asked "What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?" he replied: "An appropriate statement." On another occasion, he answered: "Cake." I admired his directness. — Stephen Batchelor

I do love poop. I can't help it. The heart wants what it wants. I enjoy being clever and pithy and political, but nothing's going to get me like dumb stuff. — Sarah Silverman

If only there was enough space on this tiny card to evoke my unfettered joie de vivre for what you have done. The gaiety, the mirth, the heavenly bubbling of every effusive cell that sings inside me for your kind and pithy offering. — Joshua Braff

And soon, as Tacitus put it, the Britons were dressing up in togas and taking their first steps on the path to vice, thanks to porticoes, baths and banquets. He sums this up in a pithy sentence: 'They called it, in their ignorance, "civilisation", but it was really part of their enslavement' ('Humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset'). — Mary Beard

Grievance into a succinct and pithy phrase, while mobilizing the people to combat it. Our slogan — Nelson Mandela

Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea. — Jack Kerouac

I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mood that I have never really been able to shake completely - a mood of darkness and inevitability and facination - a mood that surely must have been held by most young people since the dawn of time as they have crooked their necks, stared at the heavens, and watched their sky go out. — Douglas Coupland

The little things we value as mundane or pithy usually turn into the big things in hindsight ... an "I love you" called out as the door closes, a walk around the same block with the same friend, Grandma's chocolate cake every time you visit ... the brush of skin on skin as two loves pause to breath in sync. Life isn't made up of miles, but memories. Cherish them while you're making them, not just after you can't make those memories anymore. — Toni Sorenson

The best kind of praise is intelligent praise. — Rachel Heffington

Clarke, define resplendent. I think it's shining, sir. Pithy, Clarke, but adequate. McCourt, give us a sentence with pithy. Clarke is pithy but adequate, sir. Adroit, McCourt. You have a mind for the priesthood, my boy, or politics. Think of that. — Frank McCourt

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer. — William Penn

He sipped again, more deeply. "Is this an interrogation, Lieutenant?" It was the smile in his voice that rubbed her wrong.
"It can be," she said shortly.
"As you like." He rose, set his glass aside, and began to unbutton his shirt.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting into the swim, so to speak." He tossed the shirt aside, unhooked his trousers.
"If I'm going to be questioned by a naked cop, in my own tub, the least I can do is join her."
"Damn it, Roarke, this is murder." He winced as the hot water all but scalded him.
"You're telling me." He faced her across the sea of froth.
"What is it in me that is so perverse it thrives on ruffling you? And," he continued before she could give him her short, pithy opinion, "what is it about you that pulls at me, even when you're sitting there with an invisible badge pinned to your lovely breast? — J.D. Robb

Dictating condolences to the mother of a murdered husband whom you've been busily cuckolding for the last three years would take more than his limited social vocabulary. — P.D. James

This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan. — Neal Stephenson

Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses. Along the way, she proved what was a foregone conclusion, namely, that the system for processing this language was essentially a more complex version of the mechanical organ, hence a Turing machine in essence. — Neal Stephenson

Stick to journalism, Mr Cort, where you never have to understand anything. — Iain Pears

If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century ... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill. — Bergen Evans

it is extraordinary how few Christians make any concerted effort to keep the commandment of sabbath rest. We have somehow twisted Jesus' pithy rebuke of the Pharisees, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27) from a warning against legalism into a license for neglect. We seem to forget that in the very next breath Jesus asserts, "so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath" (v. 28), thus asserting his lordship over - not exemption from or indifference to - this very good gift from God to his image bearers. — Andy Crouch

Princess Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses. — Neal Stephenson

Life should be like a good Tweet - short, pithy, convey a message and inspire others to follow. — Ashok Kallarakkal

It didn't take Celeste long to realize that this was going to be the sort of book club where the book was secondary to the proceedings. She felt a mild disappointment. She'd been looking forward to talking about the book. She'd even, embarrassingly, prepared for book club, like a good little lawyer, marking up a few pages with Post-it notes and writing a few pithy comments in the margins. — Liane Moriarty

If you're going to yell at me, do it in English, please. I'd like to understand the insult so I can frame an appropriately pithy response. — Chloe Neill

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income. — Isaac Asimov

There is an old Italian proverb about the nature of translation: "Traddutore, traditore!" This means simply, "Translators-traitors!" Of course, as you can see, something is lost in the translation of this pithy expression: there is great similarity in both the spelling and the pronunciation of the original saying, but these get diluted once they are put in English dress. Even the translation of this proverb illustrates its truth! — Daniel Wallace

I have never met a writer who didn't need an editor, and an editor without a writer is a person without a job. It is a fraught and often-imperfect relationship, of course, dating back to the beginning of time. You remember; after God moved upon the darkness, he proclaimed, "I've put in place some very wondrous illumination here!" And Mrs. God gently suggested the more pithy: 'Let there be light. — Alex Beam

Whatever the practical value of the Walden experiment may be, there is no question that the book is one of the most vital and pithy ever written. — Edward Carpenter

First, there was Confucius. Then, the sayings of Chairman Mao. And now the pithy, ironic, and humorous insights of Ai Weiwei. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection, which reflects a well-developed philosophy as well as a keen understanding of the Chinese Communist system. This is China made easy and interesting. — Jerome A. Cohen

If each man, on hearing a wise maxim, immediately looked to see how it properly applied to him, he would find that it was not so much a pithy saying as a whiplash applied to the habitual stupidity of his faculty of judgement. — Michel De Montaigne

In this loose structure law was weak, unpopular, and diverse. The people preferred to be ruled by custom, and to settle their disputes by face-saving compromises out of court. They expressed their view of litigation by such pithy proverbs as "Sue a flea and catch a bite," or "Win your lawsuit, lose your money. — Will Durant

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication. — W. Somerset Maugham

It's always darkest before you're blinded by the light — Josh Stern

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. — Denis Diderot

We have somehow twisted Jesus' pithy rebuke of the Pharisees, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27) from a warning against legalism into a license for neglect. We seem to forget that in the very next breath Jesus asserts, "so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath" (v. 28), thus asserting his lordship over - not exemption from or indifference to - this very good gift from God to his image bearers. There is perhaps no single thing that could better help us recover Jesus' lordship in our frantic, power-hungry world than to allow him to be Lord of our rest as well as our work. The challenge is disarmingly simple: one day a week, not to do anything that we know to be work. — Andy Crouch

Quinn Cummings is a master story-teller and her book is nothing short of delightful. Her insights into topics like celebrity, parenting, and cats with a taste for homicide are pithy and uproarious and not to be missed. Notes from the Underwire is charming, hilarious, and just snarky enough to be ultimately satisfying. — Jen Lancaster

The leaves on our little maple, all taken together, weigh thirty-five pounds. Every ounce therein must be pulled from the air or mined from the soil - and quickly - over the course of a few short months. From the atmosphere, a plant gains carbon dioxide, which it will make into sugar and pith. Thirty-five pounds of maple leaves may not taste sweet to you and me, but they actually contain enough sucrose to make three pecan pies, which is the sweetest thing that I can think of right now. The pithy skeleton within the leaves contains enough cellulose to make almost three hundred sheets of paper, which is about the number that I used to print out the manuscript for this book. Our — Hope Jahren

And yet, it gives Peter nothing. Not now. Not today. Not when he needs ... more. More than this well-executed idea. More than the shark in the tank meant to frighten, more than the guy on the street meant to say something pithy about celebrity. More than this. — Michael Cunningham

The trouble with you, Anne, is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Allan and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her, said Marilla, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Anne instantly realized this. — L.M. Montgomery

Speaking of Twitter, I don't even know if I composed a blog entry in 2009, as I was too busy parceling my every thought into cute 140-character sound bites. I used to only worry about being pithy for a living; now some of my best lines are wasted on a free app! — Diablo Cody

Exactly. The most convincing argument doesn't come from pithy sayings or aphorisms, but through stories. A clear line of causality, from one event to the next, that seems to be leading to an inevitable conclusion." "We are fighting our guerrilla war battle by battle. — Edward W. Robertson

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings. — Kate Christensen

I stared up at the Erlking, and with my typical pithy brilliance said, Uh-oh. — Jim Butcher

His business. On Denman's death he returned to his former trade, and shortly set up a printing house of his own from which he published "The Pennsylvania Gazette," to which he contributed many essays, and which he made a medium for agitating a variety of local reforms. In 1732 he began to issue his famous "Poor Richard's Almanac" for the enrichment of which he borrowed or composed those pithy utterances of worldly wisdom which are the basis of a large part of his popular reputation. — Benjamin Franklin

The Content Marketing Institute has derived a pithy one-sentence definition of this emerging field:5 "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action. — Eric Greenberg

those who are weak enough to think this a degrading task, and the time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any age, JULIUS CAeSAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apothegm or an oracle.' Having said thus much by way of introduction, I commit the following pages to the candour of the Publick. — Anonymous

This wobbly world
host to insects and lint
and a thousand pithy ways
to feel unserious each minute
It brings about
a great softening of the mind, like
the clouded edges of sea glass (this
filter you could download and apply)
A poultice or an opiate,
rigidly individual. Alone
and erasing sentences to splinters.
(Poem No. 5) — Erin J. Watson

(T)he essential thing is to keep in mind all the strata that go to make up the book. Archaic wisdom from the dawn of time, detached and systematic reflections of the Confucian school in the Chou era, pithy sayings from the heart of the people, subtle thoughts of the leading minds: all these disparate elements have harmonized to create the structure of the book as we know it. — Hellmut Wilhelm

He who cannot swim should neither chase the dolphins nor play with sharks. For him disaster awaits like sunrise. — J. Loren Norris

I'd always imagined that I'd come up with something clever and pithy when it came to my last words, but as I stood there staring at those horrifying green eyes, I settled for a little startled profanity.

How embarrassing. — Kate SeRine

You will fall in love with someone for one night and one night only. They'll come to you when you need them and be gone in the morning when you don't. At first, this will make you feel empty and you'll try to convince yourself that you could've loved this person for longer than a night, but you can't. Some people are just meant to make cameo appearances, some are destined to be a pithy footnote. That's okay though. Not every person we love has to stick around. Sometimes it's better to leave while you're still ahead. Sometimes it's better to leave before you get unloved. — Ryan O'Connell

I haven't lived a full enough life to look back on, but I am too old to get by on being pithy and cute. I know enough now to know I know nothing. I am slugging away every day, just like you. — Amy Poehler

The pain of love does not break hearts, it merely seasons them. The disappointed heart revives itself and grows meaty and piquant. Sorrow expands it and makes it pithy. The spirit, on the other hand, can snap like a bone and may never fully knit — Tom Robbins

Are you good at keeping secrets, Merry?" "I'm better than some." I pause, then add, "More often than not, they keep me," only because it sounds simultaneously mysterious and pithy. — Paul Tremblay

Goethe is always pithy. — Arthur Conan Doyle

How could he encapsulate in a pithy admissions-interview line all of his unique ideas and interests? — Alexandra Robbins

I realised you can sit on the outside and complain and whinge and make clever, pithy observations on what the party is doing wrong, or you can get back into the fray. — Dee Madigan

Lauren, he murmured.
She looked up into his face, into his glazed eyes. Her lips parted to say something cutting, pithy, witty - God, anything would be better than nothing - when he leant toward her, those angry-sky eyes of his growing intense with clarity, and then his mouth was on hers.
Lord, he still kisses ...
His tongue dipped past her lips, seeking and finding hers with little resistance. He tasted as good as he had fifteen years ago - toothpaste and coffee and him. He tasted as good. He smelt as good. He felt as good. — Lexxie Couper

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
(Letter 16, 1657) — Blaise Pascal

The lads I've met in cupid's deadlock
Were - shall we say? - born out of wedlock — Dorothy Parker

What's really important here," I whispered loudly to myself,"is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself have — Haruki Murakami

People commonly misquote the old Sacrinomicon and say that money is the root of all evil, which is moronic if you think about it. The real quote is that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. Not as pithy, but a lot truer. — Brent Weeks

A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call "perfect specimens" of flowers, trees, or butterflies - though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting. — Alan W. Watts

Booker T. Jones sounds more pithy and forceful than ever on "Potato Hole" ... Mr. Jones still jabs terse, unhurried melodies that sound as if he knows the lyrics but would never tell. Where the M.G.'s suavely underplayed their aggression, the rockers' multiple-guitar attack, with distortion and feedback, gives the music teeth. — Jon Pareles