E. B. White Quotes
"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."
- E. B. White
(Related: People, Childhood, Mind, Open, World)
"Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts."
- E. B. White
(Related: Time, Facts, Opinions, Prejudice)
"The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it."
- E. B. White
(Related: Change, Sense)
"The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance."
- E. B. White
(Related: Age, Power, Acceptance, Man, Terror, Violence)
"The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war."
- E. B. White
(Related: Time, War, Father, Years)
"The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people."
- E. B. White
(Related: People, Profit, Trouble)
"The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative."
- E. B. White
(Related: World)
"There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement."
- E. B. White
(Related: People, Agreement, Countries, Nothing)
"There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another."
- E. B. White
(Related: Leading)
"Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19."
- E. B. White
(Related: Age, Old)
"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry."
- E. B. White
(Related: Joy)
"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy."
- E. B. White
(Related: Time, Enemy)
"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
(Related: People, Deep, Today)
"Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar."
- E. B. White
(Related: Faith, Act, Grammar, Writing)
"Writing is hard work and bad for the health."
- E. B. White
(Related: Health, Work, Hard work, Writing)
"To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year."
- E. B. White
(Related: Christmas)
"A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy."
- E. B. White
(Related: Day, Writer)
"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."
- E. B. White
(Related: Play)
"A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus."
- E. B. White
(Related: Man, Nothing, Sense)
"Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men."
- E. B. White
(Related: Men, Luck, Self)
"All 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."
- E. B. White
(Related: Effect, Skin, Weather)
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
- E. B. White
(Related: Humor, People)
"Be obscure clearly."
- E. B. White
"Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim."
- E. B. White
(Related: Act)
"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."
- E. B. White
(Related: Time, People, Democracy, Right, Suspicion)
"English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street."
- E. B. White
(Related: Education, English, Judgment, Luck, Taste)
"Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one."
- E. B. White
(Related: Genius)
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
- E. B. White
(Related: Day, Desire, World)
"I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat."
- E. B. White
(Related: Thought, First, Office, Writer)
"I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."
- E. B. White
(Related: Literature)
"I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel."
- E. B. White
(Related: Nothing, Space)
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
- E. B. White
(Related: Nature, Time, Future, Man, Sweetness)
"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."
- E. B. White
(Related: Man)
"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer."
- E. B. White
(Related: Friend, Writer)
"Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car."
- E. B. White
(Related: Car, Life)