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. WHITELife’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Good deeds never go unpunished.
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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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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 main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
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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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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
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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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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.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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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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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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It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.
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You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
E. B. WHITE