Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
People
Numbers
Simply
Politeness
Greatest
Diplomacy
Nations
Courtesy
Individual
Lowest
Form
Manners
Anything
Number
Like
Nation
More quotes by E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
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
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E. B. White
Have you ever found anything that gives you relief? Yes. A drink.
E. B. White
A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
E. B. White
By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
E. B. White
I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.
E. B. White
Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
E. B. White
new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.
E. B. White
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
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.
E. B. White
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
If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
E. B. White
A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered
E. B. White
Good deeds never go unpunished.
E. B. White
It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
E. B. White
I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty—everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
E. B. White
It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.
E. B. White