all
rhetorical finery, all useless amplification, and all superfluity of
expression in general; in a word, he must strive after _chastity_ of
style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it remains. The law
of simplicity and naivete holds good of all fine art; for it is quite
possible to be at once simple and sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying only what
is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things which
everyone can supply for himself. This involves correct discrimination
between what it necessary and what is superfluous. A writer should
never be brief at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of being
grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judgment to weaken the
expression of a thought, or to stunt the meaning of a period for the
sake of using a few words less. But this is the precise endeavor
of that false brevity nowadays so much in vogue, which proceeds by
leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and logic. It
is not only that such writers spare a word by making a single verb or
adjective do duty for several different periods, so that the reader,
as it were, has to grope his way through them in the dark; they also
practice, in many other respects, an unseemingly economy of speech,
in the effort to effect what they foolishly take to be brevity of
expression and conciseness of style. By omitting something that might
have thrown a light over the whole sentence, they turn it into a
conundrum, which the reader tries to solve by going over it again and
again.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--In the original, Schopenhauer here
enters upon a lengthy examination of certain common errors in the
writing and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed to his own
countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they were intelligible,
in an English translation. But for those who practice their German by
conversing or corresponding with Germans, let me recommend what he
there says as a useful corrective to a slipshod style, such as can
easily be contracted if it is assumed that the natives of a country
always know their own language perfectly.]

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, that gives
brevity to style, and makes it concise and pregnant. If a writer's
ideas are important, luminous, and generally worth communicating, they
will necessarily furnish matter and substance enough to fill out the
periods which give them expression