Top 307 Quotes & Sayings by E. B. White

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.

Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

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

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.

It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.

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

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

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

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

The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.

The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

Be obscure clearly.

A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.

To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.

The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

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

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

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

Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.

Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can't erase it.

Use the smallest word that does the job.

Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.

Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.

Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

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.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. 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. 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.

I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.

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.

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

Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.

Being the owner of Dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can't be trained and shouldn't be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a Dachshund to heed my slightest command. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something he wants to do.

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.

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

Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.

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.

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