E. B. White Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

  E. B. White

  Death, Fashion, Men

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.91, Cornell University Press

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• Where I would like to discover facts, I find fancy. Where I would like to learn what I did, I learn only what I was thinking. Theyare loaded with opinion, moral thoughts, quick evaluations, youthful hopes and cares and sorrows. Occasionally, they manage to report something in exquisite honesty and accuracy. That is why I have refrained from burning them.

  E. B. White

  Honesty, Thinking, Sorrow

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• Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.

  E. B. White

  Art, Children, Writing

  1961 In the New Yorker, 11 Nov. Tribute to James Thurber.

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• Home was quite a place when people stayed there.

  E. B. White

  Happiness, Home, People

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

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• I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen.

  E. B. White

  Morning, Lakes, Scent

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• It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.

  E. B. White

  Odds, Sky, Cities

  E.B. White (2011). “Here is New York”, p.30, New York Review of Books

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• I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Doubt, Rooms

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• The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

  E. B. White

  World, Shade, Circus

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.106, Cornell University Press

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• 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.

  E. B. White

  Philosophy, Devil, Matter

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.215, Cornell University Press

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• All poets who, when reading from their own works,m experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.

  E. B. White

  Reading, Feelings, Experience

  1939 Quo Vadimus?, 'How To Tell A Major Poet From A Minor Poet'.

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• ... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider." "What does sedentary mean?" asked Wilbur. "Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.

  E. B. White

  Mean, Men, Thinking

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• Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down.

  E. B. White

  Children, Writing

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• Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.

  E. B. White

  Spiders, Gone, Discerning

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

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• From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.

  E. B. White

  Thinking, Three, Alive

  E. B. White (2015). “Charlotte’s Web and other classic animal stories: Charlotte’s Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little”, p.21, HarperCollins UK

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• I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

  E. B. White

  Cat, Office, Firsts

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

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• A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.

  E. B. White

  Enthusiasm, Carefree, Reader

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

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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.

  E. B. White

  Garden, Vegetables, Revolution

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• It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.

  E. B. White

  Love, Horse, Fighting

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• A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Littles, Comedy

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• A man is not expected to love his country, lest he make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable, in somewhat the way an individual who has got himself into an unconscionable scrape seems lovable - or at least deserving of support.

  E. B. White

  Love, Country, Men

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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