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. WHITEWe’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.
More E. B. White Quotes
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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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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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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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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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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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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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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.
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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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Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.
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There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter.
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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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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