E. B. White Quotes

168 Sourced Quotes

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
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

E. B. White
The 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.

E. B. White
He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

E. B. White
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

E. B. White
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.

E. B. White
Before you can be an internationalist you have first to be a naturalist and feel the ground under you making a whole circle. It 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. A club, moreover, or a nation, has a most attractive offer to make: it offers the right to be exclusive. There are not many of us who are physically constituted to resist this strange delight, this nourishing privilege. It is at the bottom of all fraternities, societies, orders. It is at the bottom of most trouble. The planet holds out no such inducement. The planet is everybody's. All it offers is the grass, the sky, the water, the ineluctable dream of peace and fruition.

E. B. White
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.

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 poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

E. B. White
A 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.

E. B. White
I hold one share in the corporate earth and am uneasy about the management.

E. B. White
When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.

E. B. White
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.

E. B. White
Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink

E. B. White
Delay 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.

E. B. White
The adjective hasn't yet been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.

E. B. White
Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

E. B. White
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything

E. B. White
Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.

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
The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

E. B. White
In 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.

E. B. White
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.

E. B. White
No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

E. B. White
New 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.

E. B. White
When 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.
I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

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

E. B. White
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 witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

E. B. White
Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope.

E. B. White