> I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one.
First known use in English comes from a 1658 translation of Blaise Pascal in 1657
> Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
translated to
> I had not made this longer then the rest, but that I had not the leisure to make it shorter then it is.
(note the archaic then)
This was a popular piece of wit at the time.
Mark Twain wrote something similar a hundred years later
> You'll have to excuse my lengthiness - the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.
alt Hacker News
> I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one.
First known use in English comes from a 1658 translation of Blaise Pascal in 1657
> Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
translated to
> I had not made this longer then the rest, but that I had not the leisure to make it shorter then it is.
(note the archaic then)
This was a popular piece of wit at the time.
Mark Twain wrote something similar a hundred years later
> You'll have to excuse my lengthiness - the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.
But it's still quite different.
There is a great article about this one on quoteinvestigator! https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/