No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITEIn a man’s middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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 -
Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.
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Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life’s dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.
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There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
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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 -
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
E. B. WHITE -
I have noticed that most men when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wanderings, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. WHITE -
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
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If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
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Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
E. B. WHITE -
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
E. B. WHITE -
I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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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.
E. B. WHITE