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I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

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
Even
Writer
Flights
Make
Takes
Conceit
Always
Felt
Carrying
Others
Flight
Certain
Manage
Firsts
Along
First
Courage
Writing
Duty
Ascend

More quotes by E. B. White

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Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
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The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
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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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We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
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I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
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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.
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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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You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
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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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A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
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The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.
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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.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
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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.
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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
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The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.
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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
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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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A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
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