Quotes by E. B. White

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
– E. B. White
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
– E. B. White
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
– E. B. White
Be obscure clearly.
– E. B. White
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
– E. B. White
Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
– E. B. White
I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
– E. B. White
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
– E. B. White
I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.
– E. B. White
I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
– E. B. White
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
– E. B. White
It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle. Once in a while it does, and you get a quick glimpse of its potential.
– E. B. White
Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
– E. B. White
Oh, I never look under the hood.
– E. B. White
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
– E. B. White
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
– E. B. White
Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
– E. B. White
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.
– E. B. White
The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss-a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.
– E. B. White
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
– E. B. White
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.
– E. B. White
To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.
– E. B. White
When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.
– E. B. White
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
– E. B. White
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
– E. B. White
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
– E. B. White
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
– E. B. White
The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.
– E. B. White
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 his acceptance.
– E. B. White
The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.
– E. B. White
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.
– E. B. White
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
– E. B. White
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
– E. B. White