E.B. White quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by E.B. White

E.B. White Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from E.B. White on Wise Famous Quotes.

The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.

Besides, my life is a catastrophe. It's a catastrophe to be without a voice.

Everything gets taken over by big business, I don't care what line you're in.

I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze.

Books are the door of escape from the forest.

Writing is not an exercise in excision, it's a journey into sound.

It is best to have a strong curiosity, weak affiliations.

When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.

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

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

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

Once you begin watching spiders, you haven't time for much else.

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

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

Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.

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

A book is a sneeze.

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

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.

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.

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

It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.

The value of the liberal in the republic is not that he is logical but that he is inquisitive.

Meetings bore me.

There is nothing so expensive, really, as a big, well-developed, full-bodied preconception.

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

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.

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

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

Commuter - one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train And then rides back to shave again.

I hope that Belief never is made to appear mandatory.

The light strengthened, the mornings came sooner.

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

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.

There is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly, and does not thrash about.

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

A right is a responsibility in reverse.

But what a gamble friendship is.

Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.

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

Almost all spiders are rather nice-looking.

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

I have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.

I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket.

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

This was your mother's door. She was loyal, brilliant, beautiful, and she was my friend. I will treasure her memory forever.

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.

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

Home was quite a place when people stayed there.

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

Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

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

It takes more than genius to keep me reading a book.

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

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

Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.

Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead.

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

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.

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

I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema, there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.

I'm not fooled any more by an ill wind and a light that fails.

I believe ... that security declines as security machinery expands.

Write about it by day and dream about it by night.

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

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

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

Very fine law," said Stuart. "When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it.

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

Wilbur blushed. "But I'm not terrific, Charlotte. I'm just about average for a pig." "You're

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

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.

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

Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.

The sky," he wrote on his slate, "is my living room. The woods are my parlor. The lonely lake is my bath. I can't remain behind a fence all my life.

The world is a wonderful place when you're young.

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.

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

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

Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.

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

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

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.

Be obscure clearly.

Good deeds never go unpunished.

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.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

As everyone knows, there is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes.

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

It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.

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

Some of the published news was distorted, but distortion is inherent in partisan journalism, the same as it is in political rallies.

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

The concern of a democracy is that no honest man shall feel uncomfortable, I don't care who he is, or how nutty he is.

Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.