4 ms·
Favorite quote time: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead" wrote Blaise Pascal (or possibly Mark Twain, or Churchill).
by danh 17y ago
Favorite quote time: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead" wrote Blaise Pascal (or possibly Mark Twain, or Churchill).
- roqetman 17y agoWasn't that Groucho?
- btilly 17y agoPascal wrote it first, though not very shortly. He actually wrote Mes Révérends Pères, mes lettres n'avaient pas accoutumé de se suivre de si près, ni d'être si étendues. Le peu de temps que j'ai eu a été cause de l'un et de l'autre. Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. which in English is My Reverend Fathers, my letters have not usually followed so closely, nor been so long. The small amount of time that I have is the cause of both. I would not have made this so long except that I do not have the leisure to make it shorter. (Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=177502 http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=177502)
- gruseom 17y agoHeh. Hobbyhorse time: this is one case where we definitively know the answer. It was indeed Pascal. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769624 What's not so well known is that the line had a polemical edge to it. The next sentence is, "You know the reason of this haste better than I do", which I assume is related to the fact that police searches were being conducted to try to prevent the Letters from being published. Considering that the first line of this letter is "Reverend Fathers, I now come to consider the rest of your calumnies," one imagines that the addressees weren't particularly pleased about it being "a long one".