E. B. White Quotes
-
The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences.
-
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
-
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
-
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
-
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.
-
Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
-
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
-
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
-
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.
-
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.
-
"What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle--it's just a web."
-
Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.
-
A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
-
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
-
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
-
All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.
-
No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
-
But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig." "Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
-
The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.
-
Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.