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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.

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
Language
Across
Sometimes
Communication
Like
Mere
Usage
Judgment
Sheer
Taste
Crafts
Streets
English
Education
Street
Getting
Luck

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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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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.
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
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A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
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Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
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Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.
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Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
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In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
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The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.
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My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a bless the mark at any spot, and to begin a sentence with Lord comma.
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The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss--a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.
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I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen to a young man it would almost certainly happen late at night.
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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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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.
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
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