Quotes from 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.

I hate the guts of English grammar. … The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity…. You can say anything that comes into your head; never forget that.

"My name is Margalo," said the bird, softly, in a musical voice. "I come from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle."

I have since become a salt-water man, but sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods.

Be obscure clearly.

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

None of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village — the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

"It's broccoli, dear.""I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

Writing is both mask and unveiling.

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.

To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.

Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.

Commuter — one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; A man who shaves and takes a train, And then rides back to shave again.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.

Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating."

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.

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.