After all, brevity is the soul of wit! There is endless merit in a man’s knowing when to have done. The stupidest man, if he will be brief in proportion, may fairly claim some hearing from us: he too, the stupidest man, has seen something, heard something, which is his own, distinctly peculiar, never seen or heard by any man in this world before; let him tell us that, and if it were possible, nothing more than that, — he , brief in proportion shall be welcome!

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian

Essay (1843-07), “Dr. Francia,” Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 62, Art. 12
    (Source)

Reviewing Rengger and Longchamp, Essai Historique sur la Révolution de Paraguay , et le Gouvernement Dictatorial du Docteur Francia (1827), et al.

Reprinted in Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1845).

See Shakespeare.