E. B. White Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

  E. B. White

  Life, Heaven, Trying

  52 Copy quote

• The best writing is rewriting.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Learning, Rewriting

  9 Copy quote

• There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

  E. B. White

  Pessimistic, Limits, Complicated

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• Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.

  E. B. White

  Running, Sight, Long

  9 Copy quote

• Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

  E. B. White

  Funny, Senior, Witty

  59 Copy quote

• Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

  E. B. White

  Change, Dark, Clouds

  Letter to M. Nadeau, March 30, 1973.

  20 Copy quote

• All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.

  E. B. White

  Inspiring, Book, Writing

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.76, Cornell University Press

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• Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

  E. B. White

  Book, Happy Times, People

  61 Copy quote

• The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

  E. B. White

  Kindness, Feelings, Rodents

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.170, Cornell University Press

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• You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.

  E. B. White

  Frogs, Jokes, Dies

  9 Copy quote

• I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.

  E. B. White

  Blue, Shadow, Barns

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.62, Cornell University Press

  48 Copy quote

• Computing machines perhaps can do the work of a dozen ordinary men, but there is no machine that can do the work of one extraordinary man.

  E. B. White

  Work, Men, Ordinary

  6 Copy quote

• In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.

  E. B. White

  Men, Years, Age

  The Second Tree from the Corner 'A Weekend with the Angels'

  35 Copy quote

• Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

  E. B. White

  Life, Justice

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

  9 Copy quote

• The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.4, Harper Collins

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• There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

  E. B. White

  Country, Agreement, People

  33 Copy quote

• I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.

  E. B. White

  Success, Morning, Determination

  8 Copy quote

• A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can't get it by breeding for it, and you can't buy it with money. It just happens along.

  E. B. White

  Dog, Silly, Canine

  19 Copy quote

• Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

  E. B. White

  Reading, Mind, Produce

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.171, Cornell University Press

  54 Copy quote

• Writing is both mask and unveiling.

  E. B. White

  Inspirational, Life, Writing

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

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• Use the smallest word that does the job.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Writing, Doe

  41 Copy quote

• Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth.... Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them across the net.

  E. B. White

  Children, Writing, Games

  38 Copy quote

• The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

  E. B. White

  Play, Audience Of One, Duty

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

  6 Copy quote

• A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.

  E. B. White

  Escaping, Self, Style

  8 Copy quote

• Books are the door of escape from the forest.

  E. B. White

  Book, Doors, Forests

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