Quote

I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.

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
Understand
Like

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.
E. B. White
Image
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
E. B. White
Image
Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
E. B. White
Image
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E. B. White
Image
Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. White
Image
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
E. B. White
Image
In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
E. B. White
Image
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
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
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
E. B. White
Image
Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
E. B. White
Image
The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
Image
A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E. B. White
Image
The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.
E. B. White
Image
I would really rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else
E. B. White