In a manner similar to Oscar Wilde's quip that:
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep upkeeping things brief demands a great deal of effort. Blaise Pascal apparently gets the nod for the first version of a frequently quoted thought. In a letter from 1657 (in French, of course) Pascal wrote:
I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.Since then numerous others (Mark Twain seems to always get credit, and not only for this but for just about any witty aphorism) have expressed the same thought. The Quote Investigator has pretty extensively researched the issue of short letters, and also of short speeches, with numerous results, almost always entertaining. Regardless of who gets the credit, the lesson seems clear - pithy remarks are cool, but it takes a lot of effort to pull off the winning off-the-cuff atmosphere.