Echoes

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

These circumstances, trivial as they may seem, have their importance; since without them we could never have come to any certainty.

Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you are as good as dead, although you may make a nice living.

Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the consumer.

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

Instead of announcing that what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.

All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors — walking, leaping, climbing, dancing.

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

The best of artists has no conception that a single block of marble does not contain within itself, beneath its surface; only the hand that obeys the intellect can reach it.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression.

Be thou never without something to do; be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or doing something that is useful to the community.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.