E. B. White Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

E. B. White

Needs, Use, Cows

4 Copy quote
It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.

E. B. White

Marriage, Cutting, Intelligent

4 Copy quote
I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels.

E. B. White

Writing, Heart, Long

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

4 Copy quote
I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.

E. B. White

Friendship, Dog, Home

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.94, Cornell University Press

4 Copy quote
The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.

E. B. White

Running, Lying, Silly

7 Copy quote
Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.

E. B. White

Children, Spring, Heart

E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.17, Harper Collins

4 Copy quote
Place yourself in the background; write in a way that comes naturally; work from a suitable design; write with nouns and verbs; do not overwrite; do not overstate; avoid the use of qualifiers; do not affect a breezy style; use orthodox spelling; do not explain too much; avoid fancy words; do not take shortcuts as the cost of clarity; prefer the standard to the offbeat; make sure the reader knows who is speaking; do not use dialect; revise and rewrite.

E. B. White

Writing, Design, Style

5 Copy quote
In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

E. B. White

Writing, Eggs, Nurse

4 Copy quote
Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer-he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.

E. B. White

Inspiring, Perfect, Waiting

5 Copy quote
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 have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.

E. B. White

Inspiring, Aunt, Wife

8 Copy quote
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

E. B. White

Islands, Race, Cities

5 Copy quote
This is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living. The having, the not having, The spending and giving, And the meloncholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, And the unbearable knowing and knowing

E. B. White

Girl, Knowing, Giving

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.220, Cornell University Press

4 Copy quote
Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.

E. B. White

Mind, Trouble, Well Said

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.208, Cornell University Press

4 Copy quote
No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.

E. B. White

Hope, Spring, Health

E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.16, Harper Collins

4 Copy quote
A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

E. B. White

Children, Writing, Way

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.120, Cornell University Press

4 Copy quote
I always write a thing first and think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure because the easiest way to have consequential thoughts is to start putting them down.

E. B. White

Writing, Thinking, Way

4 Copy quote
Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

E. B. White

Death, Fashion, Men

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.91, Cornell University Press

8 Copy quote
Where I would like to discover facts, I find fancy. Where I would like to learn what I did, I learn only what I was thinking. Theyare loaded with opinion, moral thoughts, quick evaluations, youthful hopes and cares and sorrows. Occasionally, they manage to report something in exquisite honesty and accuracy. That is why I have refrained from burning them.

E. B. White

Honesty, Thinking, Sorrow

4 Copy quote
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who enjoy bird walks enjoys theirs. Each new excursion of the essayist, each new 'attempt,' differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

E. B. White

Country, Writing, Men

E. B. White (2014). “Essays of E. B. White”, p.4, Harper Collins

5 Copy quote
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

Art, Children, Writing

1961 In the New Yorker, 11 Nov. Tribute to James Thurber.

8 Copy quote
I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

E. B. White

Writing, Doubt, Rooms

4 Copy quote
Home was quite a place when people stayed there.

E. B. White

Happiness, Home, People

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

5 Copy quote
It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.

E. B. White

Odds, Sky, Cities

E.B. White (2011). “Here is New York”, p.30, New York Review of Books

5 Copy quote
The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

E. B. White

Philosophy, Devil, Matter

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.215, Cornell University Press

13 Copy quote
The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

E. B. White

World, Shade, Circus

E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.106, Cornell University Press

9 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

William Strunk, Jr.

Katharine Sergeant Angell White

Laura Ingalls Wilder

E. B. White

Follow

Born: July 11, 1899
Died: October 1, 1985
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics