Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
A man is not expected to love his country, lest he make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable, in somewhat the way an individual who has got himself into an… — 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
