From Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books (D.18 in the Hollindale translation):
The thought still has too much elbow-room in the expression. I have pointed with the end of a stick when I should have pointed with the point of a needle
Reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s oft-quoted observation on Proust:
There has never been anyone else with Proust’s ability to show us things; Proust’s pointing finger is unequaled.
Which, for contextual honestly, should for once be quoted in critical fullness:
Something that is manifested irritatingly and capriciously in so many [of the Proustian narrator’s] anecdotes is the combination of an unparalleled intensity of conversation with an unsurpassable aloofness from his partner. There has never been anyone else with Proust’s ability to show us things; Proust’s pointing finger is unequaled. But there is another gesture in amicable togetherness, in conversation physical contact. To no one is this gesture more alien than to Proust.
Extracts 