I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
E. B. WHITEBefore the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
More E. B. White Quotes
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No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
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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.
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A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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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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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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The city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
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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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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
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You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway?
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Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.
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Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north…As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.
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And then, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before. “Salutations!” said the voice. Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried. “Salutations!” repeated the voice.
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A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.
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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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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.
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Never hurry and never worry!
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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
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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. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
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The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
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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 -
You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
E. B. WHITE