E. B. White Quotes - Page 11

Quotes about:

• 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.

  E. B. White

  Country, Design, Attention

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.139, Cornell University Press

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• Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.

  E. B. White

  Trying, Too Much, Sometimes

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• By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is unconfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers tempramentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.

  E. B. White

  Cities, Comfort, Convenience

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• "Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?" "Yes. A drink."

  E. B. White

  Giving, Relief, Drink

  "The Second Tree From The Corner".

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• Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

  E. B. White

  Country, Jobs, Tasks

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• I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else

  E. B. White

  Feel Good, Maine, Feels

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• Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.

  E. B. White

  Wanted Love, Want, Wanted

  White, E. B. White, Garth Williams (2010). “Charlotte's Web”, Puffin Books

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• We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.

  E. B. White

  Couple, Health, Giving

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• 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.

  E. B. White

  Dream, Men, Support

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.99, Cornell University Press

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• Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.

  E. B. White

  Grandma, Looks, Littles

  "The Old and the New". The New Yorker, June 19, 1937.

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• We stand or fall by television.

  E. B. White

  Fall, Television

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• A “fraternity” is the antithesis offraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality.

  E. B. White

  Ideas, Perspective, Feelings

  "In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers".

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• The South is the land of the sustained sibilant. Everywhere, for the appreciative visitor, the letter "s" insinuates itself in the scene: in the sound of sea and sand, in the singing shell, in the heat of sun and sky, in the sultriness of the gentle hours, in the siesta, in the stir of birds and insects.

  E. B. White

  Sea, Land, Sky

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• The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor.

  E. B. White

  Giving, Bonus, Rich

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• The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.

  E. B. White

  Milk And Honey, Forever, Cooking

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• Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.

  E. B. White

  New York, Men, Teeth

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• Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.

  E. B. White

  Evil, Exemption, Grants

  E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.

  E. B. White

  Fall, Age, Use

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• A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.

  E. B. White

  Rain, Book, Thinking

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• Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

  E. B. White

  Morning, War, Democracy

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• Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.

  E. B. White

  Casting Off, Memorial, Voyages

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• A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

  E. B. White

  People, Should, Lifts

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.218, Cornell University Press

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• A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.

  E. B. White

  Style, Spirit, Imagine

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Merit, Clarity

  "The Elements of Style". Book by E. B. White, Ch. V: An Approach to Style, 1959.

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• There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don't want.

  E. B. White

  Acceptance, Want, Bugs

  Harper's Magazine (October 1938); later quoted in Scott Elledge "E.B. White: A Biography" (Chapter X: Mr Tilley's Departure, p. 209), 1984.

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