E. B. White Quotes

• A writer is like a bean plant – he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

  E. B. White

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  Tags in Writer, Plant

• A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Farmer, Sense

• I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

  E. B. White

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  Tags in School

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

  E. B. White

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  Tags in More, Often, Found

• Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Like

• Be obscure clearly.

  E. B. White

  Tags in Clearly

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

  E. B. White

  Topics in Father

  Tags in Dad

• If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Temptation

• The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for Nature to follow. Now we just set the clock an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

  E. B. White

  Tags in The Seasons

• I liked to sail alone. The sea was the same as a girl to me – I did not want anyone else along.

  E. B. White

  Tags in The Sea

• A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poetry

• Commuter – One who spends his life in riding to and from his wife; a man who shaves and takes a train, and then rides back to shave again.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Women, Men

• Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Humour, Humorist

• His words leap across rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only six inches long.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Critics, Criticism

• Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

  E. B. White

  Tags in The City

• Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reading, Book

• There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

  E. B. White

  Tags in Agreement

• I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. “Never worry about your heart ’til it stops beating.”

  E. B. White

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worry

• Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.

  E. B. White

  Tags in Writers And Writing

• Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Half, Suspicion

E. B. White (66)

Birth:	11th July, 1899
Death:	1st October, 1985
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Author

About

E. B. White was an American writer. He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide, The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White". He also wrote books for children, including Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for the first time.

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Deaths

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