Verbiage Quotes
What I had to say was so clear and I felt it so deeply that I am amazed by the tediousness, repetitiousness, verbiage, and disorder of this writing. What would have made it lively and vehement coming from another's pen is precisely what has made it dull and slack coming from mine. The subject was myself, and I no longer found on my own interest that zeal and vigor of courage which can exalt a generous soul only for another person's cause.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Many of the successes of `fancy' mathematics are due to sociological and linguistic reasons. They are really high-school-algebra arguments in disguise. Once you strip the fancy verbiage off, what remains is a bare (and much prettier, in my eyes) argument in high-school mathematics, or at most, in Freshman linear-algebra and (formal!) Calculus. For example, I am (almost) sure that Wiles's proof would be expressible in simple language, and if not, there would be a much nicer proof that would.
Doron Zeilberger
