E. B. White

Be obscure clearly.

— E. B. White

The best writing is rewriting.

— E. B. White

Good deeds never go unpunished.

— E. B. White

Oh, I never look under the hood.

— E. B. White

Loneliness is a strange gift.

— E. B. White

We stand or fall by television.

— E. B. White

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

— E. B. White

In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.

— E. B. White

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

— E. B. White

An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.

— E. B. White

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

— E. B. White

I have no warm up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.

— E. B. White

Home was quite a place when people stayed there.

— E. B. White

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

— 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,…

— 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

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

— E. B. White

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this…

— E. B. White

To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.

— E. B. White

Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

— E. B. White

When snow accumulates week after week, month after month, it works curious miracles.

— E. B. White

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it…

— 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…

— E. B. White

It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what…

— 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…

— E. B. White

A "fraternity" is the antithesis of fraternity. The first... is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract…

— E. B. White

I always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to…

— 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…

— E. B. White

Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their…

— E. B. White

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way…

— E. B. White

Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests,…

— E. B. White

Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs;…

— E. B. White

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who…

— E. B. White

We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days…

— E. B. White

A man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born.…

— E. B. White

“Did you ever hear of the Queensborough Bridge?' Wilbur shook his head. 'Is it a web?' 'Sort of,' replied Charlotte. 'But do…

— E. B. White

Liberals are like dogs: The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may…

— E. B. White

It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the…

— E. B. White

You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.

— E. B. White

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

— E. B. White