Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate; drop in charity and it overflows love.
Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said, the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, everything superfluous runs over as from a full vessel.
Imagine two years worth of stuff that you've been holding on to and everything just keeps piling up to the point where the pot just overflows. You know what happens when a pot overflows? It hits the side of the pan and it hits the fire and the fire just explodes.
Superfluous advice is not retained by the full mind.
Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.
But life is short: while one lives, everything is lacking; when one is dead, everything is superfluous.
Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.
Full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.
Dress not thy thoughts in too fine a raiment. And be not a man of superfluous words or superfluous deeds.
A full bosom is actually a millstone around a woman's neck.
Conscience is a blushing, shamefaced spirit than mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles.
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
A pure style in writing results from the rejection of everything superfluous.
Let us not depreciate Earth. There is no atom in it but is alive and astir in the all-penetrating splendor of God. From the infinitesimal to the infinite, everything is striving to express the thought of His Presence with which it overflows.
Learn everything you possibly can, and you will discover later that none of it was superfluous.
My goal is to omit everything superfluous so that the essential is shown to best possible advantage.