Elwyn Brooks White Quotes

266 quotes in 3286 categories

• Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim. Act
• To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year. Becomes
• Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. Act
• I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel. Ferris
• One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. Consuming
• Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men. Courtesy
• I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat. Amendment
• The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people. Been
• Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. Democracy
• There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement. Agreement
• Writing is hard work and bad for the health. Bad
• I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens. Chickens
• There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another. Account
• It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted… Acquainted
• Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor. Absolutely
• The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it. All
• The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it. All
• 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 of… Acceptance
• The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative. Arms
• A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy. Bean

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