A despot doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
E. B. WHITEI 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.
More E. B. White Quotes
-
-
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. WHITE -
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
E. B. WHITE -
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.
E. B. WHITE -
Loneliness is a strange gift.
E. B. WHITE -
I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty-everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
E. B. WHITE -
Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
E. B. WHITE -
A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
E. B. WHITE -
Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
E. B. WHITE -
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.
E. B. WHITE -
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
E. B. WHITE -
Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.
E. B. WHITE -
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 -
I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.
E. B. WHITE