Best quotes by E. B. White

Personal ExperienceWritingAll 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.

Artistic ExpressionLiteratureIn a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.

WarDecision-MakingResponsibilityFatherhoodTimingThe time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.

ScienceHumorAnalysisHumor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

ChangeLanguageEvolutionThe living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

MortalityIn a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

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

VisionImpermanenceThe vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.

National SecurityThe 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.

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

New YorkCity LifeIt is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible.

TelevisionInfluenceCommunicationMediaSocietyWe stand or fall by television.

FriendshipLoyaltyChildhood MemoriesCompanionshipI can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

E B WhiteI have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.

WaitingDelay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer-he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.

VulnerabilitySelf-PresentationPrivacyA man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

HealthSecurityHollywoodSecurity, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.

I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.

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

BooksConfusionLibraryA library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered

HopeAs long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

New YorkFaithNew York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

DialogueIn dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.

VulnerabilityMortalityNew York CityThe subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A 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 the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.)

WritingI discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels.

Personal GrowthI 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.

ReadingIn order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.

New York CityCity LifeNew York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

CourageWritingI have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

ChangeThe Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.

VulnerabilityIn middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.

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

TelevisionTelevision should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.

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

MusicMindWho can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised.

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

LoyaltyIt 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.

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.

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

CommunicationReadingWriterAs in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.

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

ResilienceBraveryWhen we think of [John F. Kennedy], he is without a hat, standing in the wind and weather. He was impatient of topcoats and hats, preferring to be exposed, and he was young enough and tough enough to enjoy the cold and the wind of those times.... It can be said of him, as of few men in a like position, that he did not fear the weather, and did not trim his sails, but instead challenged the wind itself, to improve its direction and to cause it to blow more softly and more kindly over the world and its people.

AcceptanceThere is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don't want.

EntertainmentNewsThe most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.

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

РанокDemocracyDemocracy 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.

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

LoveEmotionsDesireLongingWilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.

SuccessБагатство DeterminationPerspectiveOptimismNot even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.

BeautyA man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis.

Writing StyleAuthorsMy prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a "bless the mark" at any spot, and to begin a sentence with "Lord" comma.

TemptationDon Marquis came down after a month on the wagon, ambled over to the bar, and announced, 'I've conquered that goddamn willpower of mine. Gimme a double Scotch.

AmbitionDreamsUncertaintyIndependenceYouthThere is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.

The South is the land of the sustained sibilant. Everywhere, for the appreciative visitor, the letter "s" insinuates itself in the scene: in the sound of sea and sand, in the singing shell, in the heat of sun and sky, in the sultriness of the gentle hours, in the siesta, in the stir of birds and insects.

The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor.

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

RoutineWe are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.

ExpressionWritingPrivilegeIn the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of being heard. Any intimation that this privilege may be revoked throws a writer into panic.

FreedomBoundariesImaginationLiberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

EqualityOrganizationFeelingA “fraternity” is the antithesis offraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality.

I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen to a young man it would almost certainly happen late at night.

BeautyNatureSpringMindfulnessCelebrationThere is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.

Writing StyleGeneral InterestA breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.

Writing StylePlace yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs; do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts as the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.

MusicA shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note of music, and the way the back of a baby’s neck smells if it’s mother keeps it tidy,” answered Henry. “Correct,” said Stuart. “Those are the important things. You forgot one thing, though. Mary Bendix, what did Henry Rackmeyer forget?” “He forgot ice cream with chocolate sauce on it,” said Mary quickly.

EmpowermentPositivityInfluenceWritingA writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

EscapeReliefCoping MechanismsAddiction"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?" "Yes. A drink."

Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?" "Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle." "What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web." "Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.

LoveWisdomGodEinstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.

BeautyExcitementJust 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.

ChildhoodA man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle aged run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats childhood - a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy.

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

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