More from E. B. White
From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White Writing is both mask and unveiling.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White 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. WhiteE. B. White “What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?” “Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.
E. B. WhiteE. B. White
Original quotes
From our community writers
Caught inside my mind trapped between its horrid lines losing precious time.
Carmen AmadosCarmen Amados Some women will have you look at life differently.
Eleni SophiaEleni Sophia The biggest reward often require the largest risks.
Nicole BrownNicole Brown Being with you is familiar, like playing guitar after some time; the theory is there but my fingers have forgotten the chords.
AstaAsta Late-night conservations, Breathtaking memories, and an endless sky full of unseen dazzling stars. That’s how I want to remember us.
AurthurAurthur Nothing is more terrifying than falling in love.
Helena DegnHelena Degn People who cannot see through souls will keep searching for beauty in faces and will never find it.
Shilpa GoelShilpa Goel There is someone out there waiting to love you in all the ways you deserve.
Ashley PrzywolskiAshley Przywolski
Meet the writers
More on even
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
Henry JamesHenry James Even one voice can be heard loudly all over the world in this day and age.
Aung San Suu KyiAung San Suu Kyi All my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons.
Roy LichtensteinRoy Lichtenstein How happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that our petitions are heard even while we are making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them.
William CowperWilliam Cowper My mother told me once that we can’t survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to.
Veronica RothVeronica Roth Because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating.
Veronica RothVeronica Roth There are words which a man cannot resist from a woman, even though he knows them to be false.
Anthony TrollopeAnthony Trollope If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one’s desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?
XunziXunzi