A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. WHITEWhen 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.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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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Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
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“What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle–it’s just a web.” “Ever try to spin one?” asked Mr. Dorian.
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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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Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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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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One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
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A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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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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I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
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Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.
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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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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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Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning
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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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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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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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There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. WHITE