E. B. White Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom — he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

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

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
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.

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

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
Who 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.

E. B. White
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.

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

E. B. White
All poets who, when reading from their own works, experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.

E. B. White
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

E. B. White
The future, wave or no wave, seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

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
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

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

E. B. White
Humor 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.

E. B. White
No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.

E. B. White
The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.

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

E. B. White
New 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!

E. B. White
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.

E. B. White
Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway — security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government.

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

E. B. White