Quote

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

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

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
Have you ever found anything that gives you relief? Yes. A drink.
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
All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
E. B. White
Image
Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.
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
... 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
Image
Home was quite a place when people stayed there.
E. B. White
Image
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
E. B. White
Image
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
E. B. White
Image
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. White
Image
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. White
Image
Books are the door of escape from the forest.
E. B. White
Image
It seemed to me that I should have a desk, even though I had no real need for a desk. I was afraid that if I had no desk in my room my life would seem too haphazard.
E. B. White
Image
The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.
E. B. White