E. B. White Quotes
-
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
-
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
-
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-
It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.
-
A “fraternity” is the antithesis offraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality.
-
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
-
Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
-
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
-
The theme of 'Charlotte's Web' is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.
-
America is now liberty-conscious. In a single generation it has progressed from being toothbrush-conscious, to being air-minded, to being liberty-conscious.
-
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
-
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
-
When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under a great strain. Writers care greatly how a thing is said - it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must make too many decisions. I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.
-
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
-
The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.
-
Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
-
Be obscure clearly.
-
Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.
-
Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
-
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
-
The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.
-
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
-
It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
-
Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.