E. B. White quotes

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)
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. View quote
E. B. White
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car. View quote
E. B. White
DEMOCRACY n The recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. View quote
E. B. White
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. View quote
E. B. White
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. View quote
E. B. White
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another. View quote
E. B. White
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus. View quote
E. B. White
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. View quote
E. B. White
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write. View quote
E. B. White
An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life. (E. B. White)
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure. View quote
E. B. White
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. View quote
E. B. White
Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind. View quote
E. B. White
The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast. View quote
E. B. White
Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going. View quote
E. B. White
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time. View quote
E. B. White
All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not. View quote
E. B. White
Commuter one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again. View quote
E. B. White
Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same. View quote
E. B. White
A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time. (E. B. White)
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom - he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold. View quote
E. B. White
Mother: It's broccoli, dear. --- Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it. View quote
E. B. White
In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living. View quote
E. B. White
Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. View quote
E. B. White