No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITEA writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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.
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I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
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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.
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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.
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We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
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Loneliness is a strange gift.
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The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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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.
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Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. WHITE