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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

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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
Higher
Friendliness
Feeling
Decency
Moral
Morals
Feelings
Rats
Anything
Milk
Rodent
Consideration
Compunction
Kindness
Rodents
Conscience
Scruples

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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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I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
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A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
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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.
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There is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.
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I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.
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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
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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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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
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We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
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Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
E. B. White
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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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.
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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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Don't write about Man write about a man.
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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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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
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