[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--In the original, Schopenhauer here
enters upon a lengthy examination of certain common errors in the
writing and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed to his own
countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they were intelligible,
in an English translation. But for those who practice their German by
conversing or corresponding with Germans, let me recommend what he
there says as a useful corrective to a slipshod style, such as can
easily be contracted if it is assumed that the natives of a country
always know their own language perfectly.]

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, that gives
brevity to style, and makes it concise and pregnant. If a writer's
ideas are important, luminous, and generally worth communicating, they
will necessarily furnish matter and substance enough to fill out the
periods which give them expression, and make these in all their parts
both grammatically and verbally complete; and so much will this be
the case that no one will ever find them hollow, empty or feeble. The
diction will everywhere be brief and pregnant, and allow the thought
to find intelligible and easy expression, and even unfold and move
about with grace.

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of speech, let a
writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has been thinned by illness and
finds his clothes too big, it is not by cutting them down, but by
recovering his usual bodily condition, that he ought to make them fit
him again.

Let me here mention an error of style, very prevalent nowadays,
and, in the degraded state of literature and the neglect of ancient
languages, always on the increase; I mean _subjectivity_. A writer