E. B. White Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by E. B. White:
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
~E. B. White
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I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
~E. B. White
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Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
~E. B. White
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All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.
~E. B. White
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
~E. B. White
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
~E. B. White
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Be obscure clearly.
~E. B. White
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The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
~E. B. White
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A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
~E. B. White
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Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
~E. B. White
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The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.
~E. B. White
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I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
~E. B. White
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Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
~E. B. White
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The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.
~E. B. White
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To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.
~E. B. White
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The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.
~E. B. White
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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
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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
~E. B. White
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Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
~E. B. White
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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
~E. B. White
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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.
~E. B. White
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I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.
~E. B. White
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
~E. B. White
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When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.
~E. B. White
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
~E. B. White
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
~E. B. White
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Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
~E. B. White
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It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.
~E. B. White
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The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
~E. B. White
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I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
~E. B. White
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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.
~E. B. White
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Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
~E. B. White
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The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.
~E. B. White
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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
~E. B. White
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A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
~E. B. White
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There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
~E. B. White
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One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
~E. B. White
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