Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. — E. B. White Cities Copy Share Image
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes. — E. B. White Art Copy Share Image
Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him. — E. B. White Adversity Copy Share Image
Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web? — E. B. White Beautiful Copy Share Image
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of… — E. B. White Audience Copy Share Image
Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
When you consider that there are a thousand ways to express even the simplest idea, it is no wonder writers are under… — E. B. White Care Copy Share Image
Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give… — E. B. White Attention Copy Share Image
It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front… — E. B. White Drunk Copy Share Image
I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
“...a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He… — E. B. White Writer Copy Share Image
There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined… — E. B. White Approach Copy Share Image
I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my… — E. B. White Age Copy Share Image
You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you.… — E. B. White Birth Copy Share Image
Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one… — E. B. White Book Copy Share Image
The South is the land of the sustained sibilant. Everywhere, for the appreciative visitor, the letter "s" insinuates itself in the scene:… — E. B. White Appreciative Copy Share Image
Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process. — E. B. White Comedy Copy Share Image
“[This story] would seem to be for children, but I'm not fussy who reads it.” — E. B. White Children Copy Share Image
Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead. — E. B. White Comedy Copy Share Image
I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat. — E. B. White Cat Copy Share Image
In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to… — E. B. White Age Copy Share Image
“I believed then as I do now, in the goodness of the published word: it seemed to contain an essential goodness, like… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. — E. B. White Democracy Copy Share Image
The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts. — E. B. White Art Copy Share Image
A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have… — E. B. White Bewildered Copy Share Image
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind. — E. B. White Childhood Copy Share Image
The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the… — E. B. White Business Copy Share Image
In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper… — E. B. White Age Copy Share Image
A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but… — E. B. White Beauty Copy Share Image
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes… — E. B. White Desire Copy Share Image
![“[This story] would seem to be for children, but I'm not fussy who reads it.” quote by E. B. White](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/4f4/e-b-white-1448_children_this-story-would-seem-to-be-for-children_2479629.png)
