Good prose is like a window pane.

George Orwell. He continues, “I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.” From “Why I Write,” 1946. Good advice for writing and life: avoid purple passages, extra adjectives, and humbug in general.