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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.

E. B. White

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E. B. White
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 11
Died: 1985
Died: October 1
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
Nature
Environmental
Tasting
Feel
Spent
Proving
Feels
Green
Respecting
Would
Prove
Ecology
Men
Environment
Pollution
Time
Future
Sweetness
Less
Optimistic
Outwit
Fall
Bright
Seniority

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Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.
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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
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Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
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Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
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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.
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The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
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It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.
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Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
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Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can't get it by breeding for it, and you can't buy it with money. It just happens along.
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I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty—everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
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