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Wilbur burst into tears. I dont want to die, he moaned. I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends. I want to breathe the beautiful air and lie in the beautiful sun.

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
Friends
Breathe
Wilbur
Lying
Sun
Moaned
Beautiful
Air
Manure
Right
Tears
Vegetarianism
Comfortable
Pile
Stay
Burst
Alive
Vegetarian
Dies
Dont

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.
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.
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Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
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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.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
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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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The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. White
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
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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
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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
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.
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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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Life is always rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.
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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
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Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.
E. B. White