Rest not upon scattered counsels, for they will rather distract and mislead than settle and direct. [ Bacon ]

A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner: it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many. [ Seneca ]

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]