Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. WHITEUse the smallest word that does the job.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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.
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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.
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The city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
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We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
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You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway?
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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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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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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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I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
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I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
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Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
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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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There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
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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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I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
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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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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.
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You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
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Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
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I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
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Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
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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.
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
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It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck.
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