When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
E. B. WHITEMost 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.
More E. B. White Quotes
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People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
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I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
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The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.
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Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
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To achieve style, begin by affecting none.
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I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they
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A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
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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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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
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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. WHITE






