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. WHITEBy helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
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One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
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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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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.
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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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There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter.
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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
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A schoolchild should be taught grammar-for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
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Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
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Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself – a lad of about 19.
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Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
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Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.
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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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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
E. B. WHITE