black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

E. B. White

The best writing is rewriting.
E. B. WHITE

Best Rewriting Write
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
E. B. WHITE

Audience Duty Himself True One Play Pleasure Satisfy Whole Writer
Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
E. B. WHITE

Alert Condition Demand Finally Ideal Mind Produce Read Sort Under Work
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. WHITE

Add Compress Heihhening Mean Much Music Poem Small Space
A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.
E. B. WHITE

Accident Companisoble Indispensable Nature Reality
I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they
E. B. WHITE

Amd Lose Mad Nothing Often Think Winter
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E. B. WHITE

Along Come Fiend Good Someone True Writer
In a man’s middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
E. B. WHITE

Authority Body Hesitate Man Middle Over Part Proper Scarcely
Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
E. B. WHITE

Clearly Obscure Tongue Understand Way Wild
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
E. B. WHITE

Bad Hard Health Work Writing
If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
E. B. WHITE

Anything Beter Good Man Most Obsessed Perhaps Something Suppose
Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.
E. B. WHITE

Practice Silly Think Thought Unjust Way Write
There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.
E. B. WHITE

Begin Cockpit Start Train Trim Usually Wait
Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. WHITE

Hurry never Worry
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.
E. B. WHITE

Charm Condition Desirable Devotees Fatal Local Nationalism Prepossess Self Sufficiency Two
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.
E. B. WHITE

Contemplate Country Eman People Person Place Second Sick Stomach

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More E. B. White Quotes