Take this quote by anthropologist Clifford Geertz:

One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.

A lovely little idea weighed down by free-loading filler words. First of all, the preamble is unnecessary. We all alone indicates we are talking about humans. And let us decide how significant your fact is. Don’t be so insecure (or arrogant).

One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that We all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.

How good is a sentence if decapitation improves it?

The other necessary change is screamingly obvious. We end in the end? Sure, but only after we have begun in the beginning. (Was he trying to reach a word count? Or distract a doorman while someone snuck in?)

We all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived live only one.

For our troubles, we get a free upgrade from having lived to live. Free the verb to be a verb.

We’ve chopped our way down to the meat of the sentence. Is there any fat to trim?

Is We all better than We?

How much better is kinds of life than lives that it deserves three times the space? Sentence space is precious. Raise the rent.

We all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life lives but in the end having lived live only one.

Can we prune more? Riding the high of halving the original, it’s tempting to cut out in the end.

We begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand lives but in the end live only one.

But in the end is contributing. It invokes the passage of time by drawing a line from begin. It draws the arc of a single life lived. Tracing this line we sense the transformation of many possibilities into one reality. We also sense the briefness of this single life now that the sentence is briefer.

We begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand lives but in the end live only one.

There are several words here doing a job. Natural equipment means bodily and mental potential, while equipment alone would mean material tools like hammers and textbooks.

The the in front of natural equipment is one of those pesky ones. It’s like a plain, mild-mannered friend that you think you can exclude from the group but without whom things are somehow less comfortable.

We begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand lives but in the end live only one.

When we scrutinize words like this, when we interrogate them, we learn what each of them is doing. This allows us not only to eliminate useless words but to replace imprecise ones.

Is a thousand lives enough? Should we multiply it with itself to raise the stakes?

We begin with the natural equipment to live a million lives but in the end live only one.

Hmm. Now it feels too… flippant? And somehow… overstated?

A thousand lives has the modesty that lacked in the original sentence’s preamble. It sticks the landing without too extravagant a flourish.

We begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand lives but in the end live only one.

Much better. Ok, next sentence.