E.B. White Quotes

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.

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.

Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator.

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.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.

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.

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

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

I get up every morning determined to both save the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

E.B. White Quotes part 2

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But 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.

There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Only the very dignified owl and the conscientious skunk have the power of holding up the entire nation to ridicule.

He was furious about the indignity of being small because he wanted to be great need time to show.”

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. 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.

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

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

Middle age is youth without levity, and age without decay.

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

There is nothing more soothing than writing. That is the only consolation for not being a professional writer.

Education is more than a luxury; it is a responsibility that society owes to itself.

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

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

I do not believe that there is a district in the world where men and women would not welcome the endangered forms of life that flourish in their midst.

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

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. 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.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.

Your mind is filled with ideas, but you don’t know quite what they are or how to express them; what you long for is a form that will contain them–a bottle, possibly, with a cork in the top.

The best writers tend to be the most observant individuals. They’re curious. They’re able to follow what’s happening in the world.

I don’t usually know where I’m going because your wants change constantly. That changes every time you sit down and start a new piece. It’s not an intangible, just a predicament.

You have to be able to imagine lives that are different from the one you see. It’s a kind of flexibility.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.