E. B. White Quotes - Page 12

Quotes about:

• The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

  E. B. White

  Reading, Writing, People

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• I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.

  E. B. White

  Truth, Giving, Thrill

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• We stand or fall by television.

  E. B. White

  Fall, Television

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• The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.

  E. B. White

  Moving, Knights, Organization

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.200, Cornell University Press

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• The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.

  E. B. White

  Change, Running, Long

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.85, Cornell University Press

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• Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.

  E. B. White

  Grandma, Looks, Littles

  "The Old and the New". The New Yorker, June 19, 1937.

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• 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 with the other members.

  E. B. White

  Inspirational, Loyalty, Men

  1942 One Man's Meat, 'One Man's Meat'.

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• I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.

  E. B. White

  Funny, Dog, Hands

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

  E. B. White

  Hope, Time, Women

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.126, Cornell University Press

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• 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 things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

  E. B. White

  Time, Writing, Men

  1975 Letter to Corona Macheiner, 11 Jun.

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• A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

  E. B. White

  People, Should, Lifts

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.218, Cornell University Press

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• The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

  E. B. White

  Peace, Father, War

  1954 The Second Tree from the Corner, 'The Second Tree from the Corner'.

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• All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Weather, Skins

  E. B. White (2014). “Writings from The New Yorker 1925-1976”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don't want.

  E. B. White

  Acceptance, Want, Bugs

  Harper's Magazine (October 1938); later quoted in Scott Elledge "E.B. White: A Biography" (Chapter X: Mr Tilley's Departure, p. 209), 1984.

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• Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Merit, Clarity

  "The Elements of Style". Book by E. B. White, Ch. V: An Approach to Style, 1959.

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• A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered

  E. B. White

  Book, Library, May

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• In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Speech, Tests

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.

  E. B. White

  Pigs, Roles, Chance

  E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.20, Harper Collins

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• If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.

  E. B. White

  Sound, Magazines, Sometimes

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• I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Firsts, Flight

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• New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

  E. B. White

  Country, New York, Cities

  Interview with George Plimpton and Frank Crowther for The Paris Review (1969); later published in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews", Series eight, 1988.

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• Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

  E. B. White

  Funny, Inspiring, Mind

  E. B. WHITE (1954). “The SECOND TREE from the CORNER”

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• I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears as much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Fear, Party

  E. B. White (1989). “The Letters of E. B. White”, Perennial

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• When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Adversity, Men

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• We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

  E. B. White

  Loyalty, Fighting, Tolerance

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.92, Cornell University Press

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