The best writing is rewriting.
E. B. WHITEWriting is hard work and bad for the health.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.
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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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Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.
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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.
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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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Oh, I never look under the hood.
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You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
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A schoolchild should be taught grammar-for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.
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Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.
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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.
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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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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.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. WHITE