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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.

E. B. White

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E. B. White
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 11
Died: 1985
Died: October 1
Editor
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Journalist
Novelist
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Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
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More quotes by E. B. White

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... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider. What does sedentary mean? asked Wilbur. Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.
E. B. White
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
E. B. White
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I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
E. B. White
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A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false lively, not dull accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E. B. White
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
E. B. White
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. White
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You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
E. B. White
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There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
E. B. White
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New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. White
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A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
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It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.
E. B. White
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Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
E. B. White
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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
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Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
E. B. White
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
E. B. White
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Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
E. B. White