Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Felt
Secretary
Might
Unexpected
Writing
Personally
Safekeeping
Even
Held
Unworldly
Always
Responsible
Enchantment
Men
Small
Charged
Though
Items
Lost
Worldly

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E. B. White
Image
When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.
E. B. White
Image
The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. White
Image
new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.
E. B. White
Image
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
E. B. White
Image
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
E. B. White
Image
A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.
E. B. White
Image
Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.
E. B. White
Image
Use the smallest word that does the job.
E. B. White
Image
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
Image
I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
E. B. White