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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

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 poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. WHITE

Add Compress Heihhening Mean Much Music Poem Small Space
Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
E. B. WHITE

Clearly Obscure Tongue Understand Way Wild
Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.
E. B. WHITE

All Anything Ask Been Deserve Done Friend never You
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.
E. B. WHITE

Barber Chair Drop Enter Magazine Men Most Notice Pick Shop Wait
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
Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.
E. B. WHITE

Contemplate Country Eman People Person Place Second Sick Stomach
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
E. B. WHITE

Compunction Conscience Consideration Decency Kindness Milk Moral Rat Rodent Scruples
You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.
E. B. WHITE

Die Dissect Frog Joke Tend
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.
E. B. WHITE

Called Mere Necromancy Poll Science Talking
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
E. B. WHITE

Democracy Half More Person Recruitment Suspicion Time
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. WHITE

Beauty Clear Dare Poet Remove Unzip
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
E. B. WHITE

Anything Being More People Thought Touchy Unjust
It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God’s grace.
E. B. WHITE

Kitchen Living Morning Room Sunday Woodshed
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. WHITE

Business Creation Distraction Forgiving Great Merely Part Small
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WHITE

Attitude Decently Distrustful Intelligence Patronizing Reader Write

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

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