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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

E. B. White

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.
E. B. WHITE

Anyone Born Eating Heaven Help Little Perhaps Something
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

Intensify Meaning Mystification Pleasure Poet Withhold
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
E. B. WHITE

Desire Editor Escape More Person Terrible Write Writer
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. WHITE

Crack Found Genius More One Whole
There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine.
E. B. WHITE

Begin Cockpit Start Train Trim Usually Wait
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society – things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
E. B. WHITE

Bluffer Expression Great Guess Human Sailor Same Society True Weather
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.
E. B. WHITE

Animal Attention Catch Play Possible Quite Remark Spoken
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. WHITE

Freedom Oood Prefer Safety Well
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
E. B. WHITE

Attention Country Duty Writer
Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together-just the two of you.
E. B. WHITE

Book Men Most Secret Women World
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
E. B. WHITE

Communication Creative Escape Open Revelation Self Write Writing
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
E. B. WHITE

English Mere More Sometimes Taste Usage
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. WHITE

Arise Between Desire Enjoy Morning World
Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
E. B. WHITE

Creative Habitually Lucky People
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

Childish Essayist Everything Happen Liberate Self Sustain Think
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

Absorb Concern Heart Himself Stir Typewriter Writer

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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