"Whatever advice you give, be short"
About this Quote
Horace captures a perennial truth: good counsel should be brief. Advice is most useful when it is distilled, concrete, and easy to remember; anything longer risks losing its grip on the listener. Brevity is not a stylistic whim but a cognitive strategy. People absorb and retain compact ideas more readily than sprawling explanations, and the more we pile on, the more attention fragments and memory fails. A short directive also carries a moral courtesy: it respects time, sharpens focus, and leaves room for questions and judgment.
The line comes from Horace’s Ars Poetica, a verse letter of practical wisdom to poets and critics in Augustan Rome. His audience was trained in rhetoric and knew that excess ornament can smother sense. Brevitas was a classical virtue: the disciplined compression that trims digression and lets meaning strike cleanly. Horace is not urging stinginess of thought but economy of expression, the art of choosing what truly matters and casting the rest aside.
Conciseness, however, is a demanding craft. It forces selection, structure, and strong verbs; it banishes hedges and vanity. Paradoxically, shortness requires more work from the speaker so the listener can do less. Horace elsewhere admits a danger: striving to be brief, one can become obscure. The remedy is clarity first, compression second. Cut until the idea is crisp, but not until it is cryptic.
The counsel travels well across centuries. In crowded inboxes, in clinical instructions, in a manager’s feedback or a teacher’s rubric, succinct guidance increases compliance and reduces error. Our era’s information glut makes Horace’s standard feel modern: the most generous advice is the kind you can grasp on the first reading and act on immediately. Say just enough to illuminate the path, then stop. The rest is practice and conversation.
The line comes from Horace’s Ars Poetica, a verse letter of practical wisdom to poets and critics in Augustan Rome. His audience was trained in rhetoric and knew that excess ornament can smother sense. Brevitas was a classical virtue: the disciplined compression that trims digression and lets meaning strike cleanly. Horace is not urging stinginess of thought but economy of expression, the art of choosing what truly matters and casting the rest aside.
Conciseness, however, is a demanding craft. It forces selection, structure, and strong verbs; it banishes hedges and vanity. Paradoxically, shortness requires more work from the speaker so the listener can do less. Horace elsewhere admits a danger: striving to be brief, one can become obscure. The remedy is clarity first, compression second. Cut until the idea is crisp, but not until it is cryptic.
The counsel travels well across centuries. In crowded inboxes, in clinical instructions, in a manager’s feedback or a teacher’s rubric, succinct guidance increases compliance and reduces error. Our era’s information glut makes Horace’s standard feel modern: the most generous advice is the kind you can grasp on the first reading and act on immediately. Say just enough to illuminate the path, then stop. The rest is practice and conversation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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