The Art of Worldly Wisdom(105)

Don't be a Bore. The person obsessed with one business or one topic is apt to be tiresome. Brevity flatters and does better business—it gains by courtesy what it loses by curtness. Good things, when short, are twice as good. The quintessence of the matter is more effective than a whole farrago of details. It is a well-known truth that talkative folk rarely have much sense whether in dealing with the matter itself or its formal treatment. There are people who serve more as stumbling-stones than centerpieces, useless lumber in everyone's way. The wise avoid being bores, especially to the great, who are fully occupied: it is worse to disturb one of them than all the rest. Well said is soon said.