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

More quotes by E. B. White

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By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
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In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
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Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
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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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A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
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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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Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
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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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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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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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But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig. Well, said Mrs. Zuckerman, it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
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Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.
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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.
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When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.
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I have a spaniel that defrocked a nun last week. He took hold of the cord. I had hold of the leash. It was like elephants holding tails. Imagine me undressing a nun, even second hand.
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