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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.

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
Looks
Dark
Sailors
Great
Society
Sailor
Things
Shows
Weather
True
Clouds
Change
Guess
Look
Expression
Human
Changed
Humans
Break

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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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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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A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.
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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
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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.
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From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
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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.
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Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.
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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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The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
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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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You have been my friends. That in itself is a tremendous thing.
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Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.
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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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The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
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