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Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.

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
Individual
Lowest
Form
Manners
Anything
Number
Like
Nation
People
Numbers
Simply
Politeness
Greatest
Diplomacy
Nations
Courtesy

More quotes by E. B. White

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But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig. Well, said Mrs. Zuckerman, it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
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By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is unconfortable and inconvenient but New Yorkers tempramentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.
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Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. White
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Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.
E. B. White
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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.
E. B. White
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The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
E. B. White
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
E. B. White
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The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.
E. B. White
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
E. B. White
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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. White
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In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
E. B. White
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Books are the door of escape from the forest.
E. B. White