Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a "sense" of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait,… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it… — 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
