Quote

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

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
Beauty
Variety
Powerless
Making
Wild
Resist
Living
Pursuit
Idle
Jobs
Tasks
Belongs
Anything
Embrace
Favor
Live
Side
Excitement
Country
Full
Favors
Immediacy
Time
Sides
Task
Pushed

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.
E. B. White
Image
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
E. B. White
Image
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
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 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
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. White
Image
Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
E. B. White
Image
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.
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
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.
E. B. White
Image
Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. White
Image
Life is always rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.
E. B. White
Image
new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.
E. B. White
Image
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
E. B. White
Image
Use the smallest word that does the job.
E. B. White
Image
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E. B. White
Image
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.
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