E. B. White Quotes - Page 12

Quotes about:

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.

  E. B. White

  Humor, Artist, World

  E. B. WHITE (1954). “The SECOND TREE from the CORNER”

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• Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

  E. B. White

  Children, Thinking, Parent

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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 poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

  E. B. White

  Poetry, Doe, Veils

  1942 One Man's Meat, 'Poetr y'.

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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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• Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.

  E. B. White

  Accumulation, Discouraging

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Wings, Bird

  "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr., E. B. White, (Ch. V), 1972.

  7 Copy quote

• New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

  E. B. White

  New York, White, Church

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.156, Cornell University Press

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• The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.

  E. B. White

  Media, Roles, News

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• I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.

  E. B. White

  4 Copy quote

• It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.

  E. B. White

  Real, Order, Should Have

  4 Copy quote

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

  E. B. White

  Feel Good, Maine, Feels

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• The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences.

  E. B. White

  Country, War, Bombs

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• Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?" "Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle." "What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web." "Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Miracle, Trying

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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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• Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom.

  E. B. White

  Book, Childhood, Adults

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• If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.

  E. B. White

  Smart, Men, People

  1952 Charlotte. Charlotte's Web, ch.10.

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• I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Fear, Party

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered

  E. B. White

  Book, Library, May

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• The theme of 'Charlotte's Web' is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.

  E. B. White

  Pigs, Ideas, Wish

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