Quotes by E. B. White

“To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.”

“Writing is hard work and bad for the health.”

“Be obscure clearly.”

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

“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 m...”

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

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”

“Reading is the work of the alert mind is demanding and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any othe...”

“His words leap across rivers and mountains but his thoughts are still only six inches long.”

“Humour plays close to the big hot fire which is the truth and the reader feels the heat.”

“Humour can be dissected as a frog can but the thing dies in the process.”

“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.”

“A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a l...”

“If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a...”

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