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. WHITEEvery 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.
More E. B. White Quotes
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It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.
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In every queen there’s a touch of floozy.
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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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I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty-everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
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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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Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning
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There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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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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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’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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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
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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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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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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.
E. B. WHITE






