Best Shortest Quotes

“So true it is, that even the shortest step out of the immediate circle of one's best friends, is equal, in effect, to the remotest separation.”

— E.T.A. Hoffmann

“Think of something useless, and that's probably what I'll be doing. Listen, Virginia, we need to love the useless. We need to raise pigeons without a thought of eating them, plant rose bushes without expecting to pick roses, write without aiming at publication. We need to do things without expecting benefits in return. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but it's in the curving paths that the best things are found ... We must love the useless, because there is beauty in uselessness.”

— Lygia Fagundes Telles

“She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time.
And she was wonderfully unhinged.”

— Gary Paulsen

“But the shortest works are always the best.”

— Jean De La Fontaine

“So waiting is a holy work
Of faith in God. Nor does there lurk
Beneath the timing of his ways
Some secret malice that displays
Itself in holding back the flow
Of future grace. God does not go
From here to there by shortest routes;
He makes a place for faith and doubts.
Nor does he hasten on his way,
But comes when it is best, today,
Or maybe twenty years from now,
Or more.”

— John Piper

“The best sentence? The shortest.”

— Anatole France

“Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence”

— Mencius

“The art of Navigation demonstrates how, by the shortest good way, by the aptest direction, and in the shortest time, a sufficient ship, between any two places (in passage navigable) assigned, may be conducted; and in all storms and natural disturbances chancing, how to use the best possible means, whereby to recover the place first assigned.
Mathematical Preface”

— John Dee

“I bet that the best thing about being a hermaphrodite is that you always get to use the bathroom with the shortest line.”

— Brad Wilkerson

“We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

— Thomas W. Horton

“The shortest follies are the best.
[Fr., Les plus courtes folies sont les meilleures.]”

— Pierre Charron

“The shortest follies are the best.”

— Pierre Charron

“The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them. The best sentence? The shortest.”

— Anatole France

“The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interest to promote yours.”

— Jean De La Bruyere

“The cheapest way to travel, and the way to travel the farthest in the shortest distance, is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish line, some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar ... Any one of these things I mean, not all together. I have traveled thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would not be best to travel always. But I never thought of traveling simply as a means of getting a livelihood.”

— Henry David Thoreau