Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays — E. B. White Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small… — E. B. White Copy Share Image
The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or… — E. B. White 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
In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large… — 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
