Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
E. B. WHITEAn editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
More E. B. White Quotes
-
-
A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
E. B. WHITE -
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
E. B. WHITE -
Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning
E. B. WHITE -
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
E. B. WHITE -
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
E. 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. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
Use the smallest word that does the job.
E. B. WHITE -
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 -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
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. WHITE -
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
E. B. WHITE -
Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
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
E. B. WHITE -
Loneliness is a strange gift.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one’s belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.
E. B. WHITE -
“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?” “Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.
E. B. WHITE -
You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
E. B. WHITE -
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?
E. B. WHITE