The real wisdom here isn't about brevity as virtue—it's Pascal's admission that *clarity demands effort*. We often mistake our first draft for our honest thought, when really it's just our unedited one. Watch how a busy friend texts you a wall of rambling messages versus a carefully-worded email sent after they've had time to think; the shorter version required them to do harder work beforehand. Pascal was confessing that constraint forces understanding—you can't trim what you haven't fully grasped.