Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet… — E. B. White 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 Copy Share Image
I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream,… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth… — E. B. White 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
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off. — 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 Copy Share Image
By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little… — E. B. White 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 Copy Share Image
“To hear, in the short space of one week, a Scottish terrier booed by an audience and President Roosevelt criticized by Charles Lindbergh was… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
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… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma. — E. B. White Copy Share Image
