No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITE
E. B. WHITE
E. B. White on decently
E. B. White121 quotes“No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.”
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More from E. B. White
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people– people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White A schoolchild should be taught grammar-for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White To achieve style, begin by affecting none.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society – things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White
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