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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.
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
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Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
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More quotes by E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
E. B. White
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
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
E. B. White
The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.
E. B. White
It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.
E. B. White
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E. B. White
I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
E. B. White
In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
E. B. White
If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
E. B. White
As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
All poets who, when reading from their own works,m experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.
E. B. White
Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.
E. B. White