E. B. White Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.

E. B. White
Did it ever occur to you that there's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another?

E. B. White
The essayist arises in the morning and, if he has work to do, selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he 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.

E. B. White
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

E. B. White
A 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.

E. B. White
New york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.

E. B. White
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
In 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.

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

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
"It's broccoli, dear."
"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

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

E. B. White
A 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.

E. B. White
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

E. B. White
Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

E. B. White
The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
America is now liberty-conscious. In a single generation it has progressed from being toothbrush-conscious, to being air-minded, to being liberty-conscious.

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

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
As 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.

E. B. White
People are animals, and the city is full of people in strange plumage.

E. B. White
New 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.

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

E. B. White