Quote

The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase.

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
First
Follow
Springtime
Time
Taking
Virgins
Example
Oil
Hours
Clock
Nature
Ahead
Change
Hour
Young
Spring
Clocks
Firsts
Fields
Fertility

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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.
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As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading-the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the resspondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.
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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.
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I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.
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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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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead.
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There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed.
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
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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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Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.
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In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
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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.
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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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I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else
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The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
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