Shakespeare's Sharpest Insult Disguised as Advice: Why Talking Less Makes You Sound Smarter

"Brevity is the soul of wit." ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Six words. No elaboration needed. Shakespeare practices what he preaches—the line cuts clean, lands hard, and stops exactly where it should. Everything after would weaken it.

The genius lives in what Shakespeare doesn't say. "Soul" suggests essence, not decoration. Wit isn't about being clever—it's about intelligence, sharpness, the ability to see clearly and speak truly. And brevity isn't just being short. It's the discipline to stop talking when you've made your point. Most people never learn that second part. They make the point, then drown it in explanation, justification, repetition. Shakespeare knew: every word after the perfect word is a mistake.

Polonius speaks this line in Hamlet—the play's most long-winded character, a man who never uses ten words when a hundred will do. That's the devastating joke. Shakespeare puts wisdom about brevity in the mouth of a verbose fool, letting us watch him violate his own principle in real time. The audience gets it. Polonius never does.

You learned this the hard way in conference rooms. That colleague who talked for twenty minutes could've made the same point in two. Meanwhile, the person everyone actually listened to spoke last, spoke briefly, and everyone nodded. You watched people mistake verbosity for expertise, length for depth. The loudest person in the meeting got credit for "contributing." The concise one got ignored—until the boss called them afterward to ask what they really thought. You figured out that people who actually know what they're doing don't need to prove it with word count. They just say it and sit down.

Now everyone's drowning in content. Threads that could've been sentences. Emails that should've been texts. Meetings that should've been nothing. We've built entire platforms around the idea that more is better—more posts, more engagement, more "personal brand storytelling." Meanwhile, the smartest observations still fit in a sentence. The problem isn't lack of space. It's lack of editing. We forgot that brevity isn't about having less to say. It's about respecting the person listening enough to say only what matters.

Shakespeare knew four centuries ago: the fool speaks until he's finished. The wise speak until they're understood.