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There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don’t want.
E. B. White -
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
E. B. White
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The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.
E. B. White -
In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.
E. B. White -
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E. B. White -
Salutations
E. B. White -
We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny... The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
E. B. White -
In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
E. B. White
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The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White -
I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.
E. B. White -
I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen.
E. B. White -
I am always humbled by the infinite ingenuity of the lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. White -
Commuter - one who spends his lifeIn riding to and from his wife;A man who shaves and takes a trainAnd then rides back to shave again.
E. B. White -
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
E. B. White
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I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.
E. B. White -
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.
E. B. White -
Wilbur burst into tears. "I dont want to die," he moaned. "I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends. I want to breathe the beautiful air and lie in the beautiful sun."
E. B. White -
The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.
E. B. White -
It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God's grace.
E. B. White -
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.
E. B. White
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In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of being heard. Any intimation that this privilege may be revoked throws a writer into panic.
E. B. White -
Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
E. B. White -
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the one thing left to us in a bad time.
E. B. White -
"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."
E. B. White