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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

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

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Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
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Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
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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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Wilbur burst into tears. I dont want to die, he moaned. I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends. I want to breathe the beautiful air and lie in the beautiful sun.
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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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You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
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It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.
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From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
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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.
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If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.
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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.
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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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Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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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.
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