E B White Quotes

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.
E B White
Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man write about a man.
E B White
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart 'til it stops beating."
E B White
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
E B White
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 clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.
E B White
I liked to sail alone. The sea was the same as a girl to me - I did not want anyone else along.
E B White
Summertime oh summertime pattern of life indelible the fade-proof lake the woods unshatterable the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever . . . the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp. This was the American family at play escaping the city heat.
E B White
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness natives give it solidity and continuity but the settlers give it passion.
E B White
If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E B White
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E B White
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E B White
Commuter - One who spends his life in riding to and from his wife a man who shaves and takes a train and then rides back to shave again.
E B White
Humour plays close to the big hot fire which is the truth and the reader feels the heat.
E B White
Humour can be dissected as a frog can but the thing dies in the process.
E B White
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
E B White
His words leap across rivers and mountains but his thoughts are still only six inches long.
E B White
Reading is the work of the alert mind is demanding and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.
E B White
Besides, my life is a catastrophe. It's a catastrophe to be without a voice.
E B White
One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress. When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before.
E B White
I'm really too young to go out into the world alone," he thought as he lay down.
E B White
I'm really too young to go out into the world alone," he thought as he lay down
E B White
New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
E B White
New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up
E B White
The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.
E B White
new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.
E B White
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.
E B White
It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.
E B White
Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives – the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.
E B White
At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.
E B White
It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
E B White
The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering and the prognostications and the turmoil, the disagreements and the fateful decisions and agreements and the plans and the programs and the threats and the counter threats, then you close your eyes and the sea dispatches one more big roller in the unbroken line since the beginning of the world and it combs and breaks and returns foaming and saying: "So soon?" E. B. White "On A Florida Key
E B White
By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere.
E B White
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
E B White
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E B White
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954
E B White
To confront death, in any guise, is to identify with the victim and face what is unsettling and sobering
E B White
It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
E B White
Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.
E B White
...Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the peopleare right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths,the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee.
E B White
The world is full of talkers, but it is rare to find anyone who listens. And I assure you that you can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.
E B White
As everyone knows, there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying
E B White
It was a delicious meal -- skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello.
E B White
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
E B White
A schoolchild should be taught grammar--for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
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 rumour of sadness and change.
E B White
When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.
E B White
There is nothing so expensive, really, as a big, well-developed, full-bodied preconception.
E B White
I have seldom met an individual of literary tastes or propensities in whom the writing of love was not directly attributable to the love of writing.A person of this sort falls terribly in love, but in the end it turns out that he is more bemused by a sheet of white paper than a sheet of white bed linen. He would rather leap into print with his lady than leap into bed with her. (This first pleases the lady and then annoys her. She wants him to do both, and with virtually the same impulse.)
E B White
Just the minute another person is drawn into some one's life, there begin to arise undreamed-of complexities, and from such a simple beginning as sexual desire we find built up such alarming yet familiar phenomena as fetes, divertissements, telephone conversations, arrangements, plans, sacrifices, train arrivals, meetings, appointments, tardiness, delays, marriages, dinners, small pets and animals, calumny, children, music lessons, yellow shades for the windows, evasions, lethargy, cigarettes, candies, repetition of stories and anecdotes, infidelity, ineptitude, incompatibility, bronchial trouble, and many others, all of which are entirely foreign to the original urge and way off the subject.
E B White
If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!" (William Strunk) ... Why compound ignorance with inaudibility?
E B White
The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep.
E B White
Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart.
E B White
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
E B White
Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.
E B White
I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively, instead of skeptically and dictatorially.
E B White
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.
E B White
Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.
E B White
The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause.
E B White
We take to the breeze, we go as we please.
E B White
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E B White