Best quotes by E. B. White

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

BeautyChangeWorldSpringNo matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.

AmbiguityLanguageCommunicationA good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.

EducationLanguageGrammarA schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

KindnessPersonal GrowthSelf-ImprovementBy helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

ThinkingWriting ProcessI always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to have consequential thoughts is to start putting them down.

ExpressionWritingChoicesWhen you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under a great strain. Writers care greatly how a thing is said - it makes all the difference. So they are constantly faced with too many choices and must make too many decisions.

MarriageRoutineRepetitionCommuter - 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.

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.

FulfillmentLuckNew York CityIt can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

CommunicationDiplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.

DemocracyDemocracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

РозчаруванняWritingMeaningWordsThe young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.

FamePerceptionWritingLimitationsHis words span rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only six inches long.

BooksKnowledgeConnectionThoughtsLibraryA library is many things, but particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books... Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had.

Writing ProcessAudienceThe whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

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

TechnologyComputing machines perhaps can do the work of a dozen ordinary men, but there is no machine that can do the work of one extraordinary man.

OpinionWhere 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.

WritingAs a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.

Personal ExperiencesGeneral InterestThe 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. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who enjoy bird walks enjoys theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new 'attempt,' differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

E B WhiteEscapeBooks are the door of escape from the forest.

IndividualityWritingStorytellingPerspectiveDon't write about Man; write about a man.

TelevisionI 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 a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.

ImprovementWriterI 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.

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

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.

ResilienceIt 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.

Home was quite a place when people stayed there.

EntertainmentComparisonShow BusinessThe 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.

Self-ExpressionSelf-ConfidencePoetryLiteratureAll 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.

TruthHumorHumour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

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.

IdeasTempleton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine. How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte. It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web." Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness.

BeautyAgingPerspectiveRemembranceWhen my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.

PatienceWaitingThinking... 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.

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

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

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

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

ProgressOur vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.

EnthusiasmWritingA 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.

LoveIt 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.

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

ПатріотизмSupportA 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.

BooksStorytellingA library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.

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

ResponsibilityA right is a responsibility in reverse.

SpringChildrenChildren hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

PoetryCity LifeA poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. 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. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

ComfortStabilityOrganizationIt seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.

BooksChildhoodMuch of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom.

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

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

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

AppearanceCriticismHuman RaceThe complaint about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernize, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.

MindWritingWriterThe 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.

BeautyPoetryClarityMeaningA poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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 poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

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

PrivacyNew York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

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

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

AgeLoveYouthLivingThis is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living. The having, the not having, The spending and giving, And the meloncholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, And the unbearable knowing and knowing

ProcessQualityOriginalityHalf a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.

TimeWhen snow accumulates week after week, month after month, it works curious miracles.

MortalityPurposeExistenceAfter all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

VulnerabilityNational SecurityNew York CityDestructionA single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate millions... Of all targets New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.

TruthMortalityWritingSelf-AwarenessReflectionI have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.

WritingRewritingClarityThe main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

SilenceIt isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.

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.

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

ArtCreativityWritingCommunicationPhotographyOf course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he maycommunicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations. In photography the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens in a knothole.

New YorkAnticipationCity LifeThe siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss--a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.

Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a "sense" of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejects humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator.