Comments and Alternative Readings: Chapter 11

Things are shaped by carving, by taking away, by diminishing the material. Accordingly that which is no longer there, the non-existent, constitutes their worth. Thus it appears that the part in this case would be greater than the whole, or to state the same truth briefly "less is more." As Hesiod says in his Works and Days (30): Νήπιοι οὐδ᾽ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντός. "Foolish they are, for they know not That half than the whole is much greater."