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This Is Water David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech

i. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do. iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active. v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can thin

Dr. Frank Luntz • Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.

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The best definition of taste I found comes from painter John Folley. He says “‘Good taste' is simply to have a well formed opinion, in accordance with the realities of the Good and the True.” There are tasteful and non-tasteful choices. Taste reveals its purveyor to be a good decision-maker.

Brie Wolfson • Notes on “Taste”

The economist, philosopher, and writer Henry Hazlitt sums up the dilemma: In the modern world knowledge has been growing so fast and so enormously, in almost every field, that the probabilities are immensely against anybody, no matter how innately clever, being able to make a contribution in any one field unless he devotes all his time to it for ye... See more

Shane Parrish • The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled

"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." - Gustave Flaubert

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Tyler Cowen is the best curator of talent in the world

Tony Kulesa kulesa.substack.com

The measure of what is necessary is what is useful.

Ward Farnsworth • The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual

But I ask the reader to remember always that I am talking of words, not as they are used in talk or novels, but as they will be used, and have been used, in warrants and certificates, and Acts of Parliament. The distinction between the two is perfectly clear and practical. The difference is that a novelist or a talker can be trusted to try and hit