Top 307 Quotes & Sayings by E. B. White - Page 2

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

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.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

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

Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays

Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

The best writing is rewriting.

An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

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.

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.

In every queen there's a touch of floozy.

Loneliness is a strange gift.

Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.

A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

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 writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.

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

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.

Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?

It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.

It is Sunday, mid-morning-Sunday in the living room, Sunday in the kitchen, Sunday in the woodshed, Sunday down the road in the village: I hear the bells, calling me to share God's grace.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.

You're terrific as far as I am concerned.

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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.

Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.

Liberals are like dogs: The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man's invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog's way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.

I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.

Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.

Never hurry and never worry!

When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.

When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.

Mother: It's broccoli, dear. --- Child: I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.

When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.

Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.

Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.

Good deeds never go unpunished.

The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation's pulse, you can't be sure that the nation hasn't just run up a flight of stairs.

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.

Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

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.

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.

I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.