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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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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
Death
Shells
Bogs
Much
Loose
Tortoise
Men
Loving
Tortoises
Fame
Haphazard
Fashion
Carve
Turn
Initials
Shall
Shell
Turns
Arrived
Peat

More quotes by E. B. White

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Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
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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.
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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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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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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. White
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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
E. B. White
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... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider. What does sedentary mean? asked Wilbur. Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.
E. B. White
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I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
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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The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss--a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.
E. B. White
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There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
E. B. White
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You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.
E. B. White
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Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.
E. B. White
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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
E. B. White