E. B. White Quotes
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We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.
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A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.
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Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.
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The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
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There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
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Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
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Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom.
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When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.
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It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
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Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.
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A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.
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Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor.
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New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.
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A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
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It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
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The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.
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A man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis.
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Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.