E. B. White Quotes
-
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
-
I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.
-
The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.
-
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.
-
There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rules by which the young writer may steer his course. He will often find himself steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.
-
Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
-
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
-
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom - he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
-
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.
-
Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.
-
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.
-
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
-
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
-
There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
-
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
-
The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences.
-
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.
-
The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.
-
Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams - Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.
-
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
-
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
-
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
-
To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.
-
Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.