E. B. White quotes - page 5

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything. (E. B. White)
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes. View quote
E. B. White
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive. View quote
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Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be. View quote
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I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand. View quote
E. B. White
There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place. View quote
E. B. White
Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway - security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government. View quote
E. B. White
Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him. View quote
E. B. White
It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible. View quote
E. B. White
In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone. View quote
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot. (E. B. White)
The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss-a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye. View quote
E. B. White
Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love. View quote
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I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else. View quote
E. B. White
Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. View quote
E. B. White
The Chinese delegate blinked his eyes and produced a shoebox, from which he drew a living flower which looked very like an iris. 'What is that?' they all inquired, pleased with the sight of so delicate a symbol. 'That,' said the Chinese, 'is a wild flag, Iris tectorum. In China we have decided to adopt this flag, since it is a convenient and universal device and very beautiful and grows everywhere in the moist places of the earth for all to observe and wonder at. I propose all countries adopt it, so that it will be impossible for us to insult each other's flag.' View quote
E. B. White
It is the oldest flag in the world, the original one, you might say. We are now, in an original condition again, you might say. View quote
E. B. White
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. View quote
E. B. White
We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny... View quote
E. B. White
Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. View quote
E. B. White
At this juncture we might conceivably act in a sensible, rather than a popular, manner. (E. B. White)
Government is the thing. Law is the thing. View quote
E. B. White
This is the dream we had, asleep in our chair, thinking of Christmas in the lands of fir tree and pine, Christmas in lands of palm tree and vine, and of how the one great sky does for all places and all people. View quote
E. B. White
In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. View quote
E. B. White
I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. View quote
E. B. White