And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'The Lesson for Today'.

The life of the journalist is poor, nasty, brutish and short. So is his style.

-Gibbons, Stella Dorothea
  Cold Comfort Farm, foreword.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

-Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)
   Trio, The Mikado, act1.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
  Letter, 23  Jul.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there isno place for industry; becausethe fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.1, ch.13.

La vie est courte et ennuyeuse: elle se passe toute a' de¤ s irer. Life isshort and bothersome: all we do is desire what we do not have.

-La Bruye'  re,Jean de
  Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'De l'homme', no.19.

A short story is always a disclosure.

-Pritchett, Sir V(ictor) S(awdon)
The Oxford Book of Short Stories (edited by Pritchett), introduction.

Life is too short to waste on the admiration of one man.

-Scott, Rose
Her habitual response to offers of marriage. Quoted in Jennifer Uglow (ed) The Macmillan Dictionary ofWomen's Biography (2nd edn,1989).

Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla. The way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns.

-Seneca full name Lucius AnnaeusSeneca called theYounger
Epistulae, 6.5 (translated by R M Gummere).

A short neckdenotes a good mind† You see, the messages go quicker to the brain because they've shorter to go.

-Spark, Dame Muriel Sarah ne¤  e  Camberg
  The Ballad of Peckham Rye, ch.7.

A short, sharp shock. See Gilbert 355:25.

-Whitelaw,William Stephen Ian, 1st Viscount
  At the Conservative Party Conference,10 Oct, on the need for more effective treatment of young offenders.