There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
E. B. WHITEA right is a responsibility in reverse.
More E. B. White Quotes
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Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself – a lad of about 19.
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And then, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before. “Salutations!” said the voice. Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried. “Salutations!” repeated the voice.
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One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
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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.
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A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
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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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Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
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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.
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“What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle–it’s just a web.” “Ever try to spin one?” asked Mr. Dorian.
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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 admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
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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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The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
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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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Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
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I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.
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You’re terrific as far as I am concerned.
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I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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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.
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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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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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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
E. B. WHITE